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THE 

MARY CARLETON 

NARRATIVES 

1663-1673 

A MISSING CHAPTER 

IN THE HISTORY OF THE 

ENGLISH NOVEL 



BY 

ERNEST BERNBAUM, Ph.D. 

INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH, HARVARD UNIVERSITY 




CAMBRIDGE 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 

LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD 
Oxford University Press 

1914 



■PI? «^* 



COPYRIGHT, I9I4 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 



OCT 23 1914 

S)CI,A387281 



TO 
Le baron RUSSELL BRIGGS, LL.D., Litt.D. 

BOYLSTON PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ORATORY 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

The Singular Life and Curious Biographies of Mary Carleton . i 



CHAPTER II 
The Carleton Publications of 1663 12 

CHAPTER III 
The Minor Publications of 1673 33 

CHAPTER IV 
" The Counterfeit Lady " a Fiction 45 

CHAPTER V 

The Narrative Technique of "The Counterfeit Lady" ... 55 

CHAPTER VI 
The Historical Significance of " The Counterfeit Lady " , . 78 

APPENDIX A 
The Current Doctrine of the Rise of the English Novel. . 93 

APPENDIX B 
Bibliographical Difficulties loi 



THE 
MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

CHAPTER I 

The Singular Life and Curious Biographies of 
Mary Carleton 

Two hundred and fifty years ago every Londoner had heard 
of the audacious adventuress Mary Carleton. To-day she 
is almost unknown ; and the only modern account of her, — 
that in the " Dictionary of National Biography," — is 
unreliable. Mary, whose father's name was Moders, was 
born in Canterbury in 1634 or 1635. She ran away from her 
first husband, a shoemaker, in 1658, married a second in 
Dover, and escaped punishment for bigamy only through the 
failure of her first husband to appear against her. She ran 
away again, — whither we know not; but in 1663 she 
stepped out of obscurity into almost national prominence. 

She appeared in London, took lodgings at an inn, and pro- 
fessed to be a high-born German lady, whose noble relations 
had wished to force her into a distasteful marriage. By the 
aid of forged letters from abroad, by a Hberal display of 
false jewelry, and by the possession of remarkable audacity, 
resourceful capabilities, and charm, she imposed successfully 
upon all that met her, and came to be known as the German 
Princess. A young student of the law, John Carleton, aided 
by his rapacious relatives, pretended to be a lord, and in 
April of the same year, 1663, won her affectedly reluctant 
consent to marriage. A few weeks after the wedding, the 
real circumstances of her past were discovered by the 
Carletons, and Mary was arrested for bigamy. 



2 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

Several pamphlets thereupon satirized the pseudo-princess 
and her pseudo-lord; but many Londoners, including the 
susceptible Mr. Pepys, visited her in prison and remained 
assured of her innocence. At her trial, of which fortunately 
the record is preserved, the case against her was stupidly 
permitted to rest on one witness; for which reason, combined 
with her imperturbably confident bearing, the jury set her 
free. In triumph she published two pamphlets recording 
her fanciful version of her life's history, which her husband 
derided in two savage replies. As he cast her off, Mary was 
soon without funds ; and within a year we find her appearing 
on the stage and, strangely enough, acting the titular part in 
" The German Princess," a play satirizing the very fraud she 
herself had perpetrated. Thereafter nothing authentic is 
known of her for seven years, at the end of which she was 
transported to Jamaica for theft (February, 1671). From 
that exile she escaped, only to be caught again (December, 
1672), and to be hanged for theft (January, 1673). Such are 
all the principal episodes of her career which, after careful 
study of contemporary publications, a cautious historian 
would consider credibly known. 

About this kernel of well attested fact, clusters a mass of 
assertions which may or may not be true. Very many 
biographical writings concerning Mary Carleton were pub- 
lished during her life-time and after her execution. They 
should interest the student of crime, of journalism, or of 
literary imposture. Above all, they need to be known, I 
believe, by future historians of English fiction ; for they serve 
to illuminate the course of the English realistic novel in its 
obscurest period. 

• That this important type of literature was begun, experi- 
mentally as it were, in the Elizabethan age, and that it 
flourished abundantly in the eighteenth century, is well 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 3 

known ; but in the long interval it did not, according to the 
current doctrine, show distinct signs of life. In fact, most 
historians of literature, finding the EHzabethan attempts 
uninfluential, hold that realistic fiction begins with Daniel 
Defoe. It is Defoe with whom, according to Professor 
Raleigh, the novel (as distinguished from the romance) 
arises.^ It is Defoe who writes, in the opinion of Mr. 
Edmund Gosse, "the earliest great English novel"; and 
who deserves, in that of Mr. George A. Aitken, the proud 
title " the father of the Enghsh novel." ^ 

This does not mean that such authorities find no writers 
earlier than Defoe nearing ' the goal which he reached. 
Almost every modern manual of literary history notes signs 
of such approaches in Mrs. Behn and in Congreve, in Bunyan 
and in " The English Rogue." Moreover, so obviously 
interesting is the rise of one of the greatest branches of 
Enghsh hterature that investigators ^ have eagerly sought 
additional signs of its origin. Yet though their researches 
(surveyed in Appendix A of this study) have been minute, 
Defoe's reputation as an original genius, instead of being 
weakened by them, emerges apparently more secure than 
ever. Before his time, we are told, " the promise of the novel 
dissolved like a mirage." He remains " the founder of the 
novel," in the sense of being the first after the Ehzabethans 
to write a long fictitious prose narrative that is not an alle- 
gory, and that realistically and seriously recounts the actions 

1 Walter Raleigh, The English Novel, 5th ed. (1906), p. 114. Cf. Wilbur L. 
Cross, The Development of the English Novel (1904), p. 27. 

^ Edmund Gosse, A History of Eighteenth Century Literature (1889), p. 179. — 
G. A. Aitken, Introduction to " Robinson Crusoe " in " Romances and Narratives 
by Daniel Defoe " (1895), I, pp. xxv-xxvii. — Cf. John Dennis, The Age of Pope 
(1901), p. 191. — W. J. Dawson, The Makers of English Fiction (1905), p. 7. 

' Especially R. P. Utter, in his unpublished Harvard thesis. The Origins of the 
English Novel (1906); F. W. Chandler, in The Literature of Roguery (1907); and 
Charlotte E. Morgan, in The Rise of the Novel of Manners (191 1). 



4 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

of personages of the lower and middle classes. Such novels, 
scholars assure us with remarkable unanimity, were before 
him not attempted, least of all in the period from 1642 to his 
own day.^ 

Since in fiction itself no direct development toward the 
modern realistic novel has been found, historians have sought 
it in other literary types of the seventeenth century. " The 
influence that the century exercised on the growth of prose 
fiction," says Mr. Raleigh, " the foundations it laid for the 
coming novel, are to be sought, not in the writers of romance, 
but in the followers of other branches of literature, often 
remote enough from fiction, in satirists and allegorists, 
newspaper scribes and biographers, writers of travel and 
adventure, and fashionable comic playwrights. For the 
novel least of all forms of literature can boast a pure extrac- 
tion; it is of a mixed and often disreputable ancestry." ^ 
To complete the list of the novelist's predecessors, one should 
mention the writers of the character, of the familiar and the 
imaginary letter, of the conduct book, and of the moral 
essay.^ In many of these forms, the second half of the seven- 
teenth century developed traits recognizably similar to vari- 
ous elements of the coming novel. The prevalent theory is, 
then, that by observing such traits, — for example, the 
realistic expression of passion in " The Portuguese Letters " 
(1678), or the conversational vigor of Restoration comedy, — 
and thereupon combining them in a new way, novelists 
learned their art. 

Many traits that have a direct bearing on the work of 
Defoe are obviously to be seen in the biographies. Of such 

1 Cf. Raleigh, The English Novel, pp. 85-86; and Aitken, ed. Robinson Crusoe, 
pp. xxv-xxvii. 

^ Raleigh, p. 109. 

' Raleigh, p. 113. — Cross, pp. 22-25. — Morgan, pp. 60-62, 66, 70-75, 89-91, 
95- 



AL\RY CARLETOX N-\RRATrVTS 5 

works the seventeenth centur>' was remarkably prolific ; and 
it celebrated in them persons of ever>^ rank of society, from 
princes and court beauties to adventurers and rogues. 
Some of these works, called secret histories, like '' The 
Amours of the Sultana of Barber}' " (1689) and Mrs. ^Ian- 
ley's " Queen Zarah " (1705), thinly veiled their personages 
under fanciful names, and appealed to the love of scandal; 
others, like " The Memoirs of ^Ille. de St. Phale " (1690) 
involved sectarian and political interests; still others, like 
Bunyan's " Grace Abounding '' (1666) dwelt chiefly on the 
spiritual meaning of Ufe. In all their variety, since they 
centered their narrative about one person, brought out his 
character, and recorded matters of fact, they might teach 
the writer of fiction unity of action, interest in characteriza- 
tion, and the graphic value of detailed incidents.^ But the 
most interesting models, because of the kind of career therein 
recounted, are the biographies of adventurers, rogues, or 
criminals; for just such lives were to be the favorite theme 
of the novels of Defoe. Indeed the present result of the 
search for the origin of the modem novel may be summed up 
in the words of ^Nliss ^Morgan and Mr. Raleigh: " Defoe 
cannot be classed with the writers of picaresque romances, 
for his narratives of roguer\' were developed from the popu- 
lar criminal biographies." " Realistic fiction in this country 
was first written by way of the direct imitation of truthful 
record." ^ 

The exact relationship of the criminal biography to the 
novel, though it would seem easily definable, raises questions 
which are as complex as they are important, yet which chance 
nowhere to be precisely answered by the authority on the 
literature of roguer>', ]Mr. F. W. Chandler. The general 
drift of his discussion, to be sure, is that an essential difference 

^ Morgan, p. 62. ■ Morgan, p. 47. — Raleigh, p. 114. 



6 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

between the biography and the novel lies in the latter being 
fiction and the former, fact. Yet some of the biographies, 
in his opinion, contained occasional fictitious episodes. 
" Where fact failed," he says, " fancy stepped into the breach, 
and many a jest-book anecdote or pleasing invention of the 
author's own came to be fathered upon hanged reprobates." ^ 
He casually mentions indications of the sort in the case of 
'' William Longbeard " (1593), " Gamaliel Ratsey " (1605), 
"The English Guzman" (1652), and "The Trepan" 
(1656).^ But he does not really examine or state the nature 
and amount of the supposedly fictitious matter until, pursu- 
ing the long line of biographies, he comes to Lucas's " Mem- 
oirs of Gamesters" (1714).^ In other words, the scholar 
who is probably more familiar with seventeenth century 
criminal biographies than any other, and who was the first 
thoroughly to appreciate their influence on literature, finds 
them radically different from the novel. " These produc- 
tions," he declares, " aimed and claimed to be veracious "; * 
and he consequently assigns to them, in " The Literature of 
Roguery," a separate chapter which includes such authentic 
accounts as Inspector Byrnes's " Professional Criminals of 
America," and which is entitled " Criminal Biographies," 
whereas he discusses Defoe's works in a chapter entitled 
" The Eighteenth Century Novel." 

Objections to so facile a classification soon arise. As 
everybody knows, not all of Defoe's supposedly fictitious 
narratives can be confidently denominated either absolute 

* Chandler, Literature of Roguery, p. 139. 

2 Chandler, pp. 143, 148, 150. — There is a hint of incredulity in remarks (p. 153) 
concerning The Notorious Impostor (1692). But the suspicion is not acted 
upon. 

^ Chandler, p. 171. 

* Chandler, p. 139. — The same opinion is implied in the statement, " English 
rogues of reality can boast a literature as ample as those of the imagination " (p. 
139)- 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 7 

fact or absolute fiction. " The Memoirs of a Cavalier," 
" Duncan Campbell," " Captain Avery," " Robinson Cru- 
soe " itself, have a groundwork of fact; " The Memoirs of 
Carleton " may be genuine; as to " Moll Flanders," " Colo- 
nel Jacque," " Roxana," and several others, much is in this 
respect assumed but nothing known. On the assumption 
that " The Apparition of Mrs. Veal " was fictitious, critics 
long used it as a favorite illustration of Defoe's marvelous 
power to make the purely imaginary seem plausibly real, — 
until Mr. Aitken's valuable researches confounded their 
speculations with the discovery that the story was sub- 
stantially true.^ The easy method of disbelieving in each 
and every case the solemn protestations of Defoe that he is 
not romancing, will evidently not do. Sometimes he lies, but 
sometimes he tells the truth; the real difficulty is to ascertain 
his moments of veracity. Add to that problem a legitimate 
suspicion that the amount of fictitious matter in the seven- 
teenth century criminal biographies is perhaps larger than 
supposed, and you have a Gordian knot which may not be 
lightly sundered but must be patiently untied. 

In approaching this complex situation, it is well to remind 
ourselves that the presence of considerable passages of true 
narrative, or of a groundwork of fact, has never been con- 
sidered to disqualify a work from being classed as a novel. 
" Robinson Crusoe " is known to draw largely on the experi- 
ences of Selkirk, and may incorporate more facts than at 
present beheved." " Pamela " is declared by Richardson to 
be in its main outlines based on a true incident. The experi- 
ences of Smollett, Sterne, and Fielding are frequently tran- 
scribed in their works of fiction. " The case of Gridley," 

1 G. A. Aitken, The Apparition of Mrs. Veal, in The Nineteenth Century, 
XXXVII (1895), P- 95 ff- 

^ Thomas Wright, The Life of Daniel Defoe (1894), pp. 164-174, 230-232. — 
G. A. Aitken, ed. Robinson Crusoe, pp. li-liv. 



8 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

says Dickens in the preface of " Bleak House," " is in no 
essential altered from one of actual occurrence. " Of " Martin 
Chuzzlewit " he writes: " I wish to record the fact that all 
that portion of Martin Chuzzlewit's American experiences 
is a literal paraphrase of some reports of pubhc proceedings 
in the United States (especially of the proceedings of a certain 
Brandywine Association), which were printed in the ' Times 
Newspaper ' in June and July, 1843." Such instances are 
innumerable. What is essential to the novel is not the total 
absence of fact, but the presence of much fictitious incident, 
of at least an approach to unity and coherence of action, and 
of sufficient characterization and motivation to vitalize the 
whole. It is not to be expected, especially in the early days 
of the art, that even these elementary qualities should be 
highly developed ; sufficient evidence of the rise of the novel 
would be signs of an evident effort to invent incidents, to 
weave them together, and to motivate them. Are such 
discoverable in any criminal biography prior to Defoe ? 

Regarding the criminal biographies as fairly true accounts, 
Mr. Chandler of course does not consider the question 
whether indications of the novelist's art may be perceived in 
them. He speaks of " the direct and vital impulse given by 
the criminal biography to the making of the modern novel," 
but not with respect to the invention of imaginary plot and 
characterization. According to him the biographies helped 
the future novelist because they " furnished matter for 
literary exploitation "; they were " source books of realism, 
and their narrative method instructed great story tellers." 
On the other hand they were " intrinsically of small artistic 
value," and devoid of character study. Indeed the gulf 
between them and Defoe's novels lay in the fact that the 
latter contained invented incidents and drew character.^ 

^ Chandler, pp. 181, 186-187. 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 9 

How may we ascertain more definitely the relation between 
the criminal biography and the novel ? The follies of criti- 
cism which sprang from a too ready disbelief of Defoe's 
assurance that " The Apparition of Mrs. Veal " was a true 
story, are sufficient to warn us not to judge a criminal biog- 
raphy fictitious because it chances thus to impress us. Mr. 
Chandler bases his occasional suspicions on the reappearance, 
in the biography of one criminal, of a trick previously re- 
corded of another; but, except where verbal borrowing can 
be shown, this test is unsafe. It is not only possible but 
common for rogues to foUow the practices of their predeces- 
sors, whether heroes of fact or fiction; and we do not usually 
disbelieve the newspaper accounts of a " gentleman burglar " 
on the ground that he seems to imitate the exploits of the 
fictitious Raffles. A better test, the comparison of several 
accounts of the same criminal, with a view to discovering 
discrepancies, is not employed by Mr. Chandler in the case 
of any work prior to 1 749 ; ^ and of course the question as to 
a work of that period may be whether the novel did not 
influence biography. This test furthermore, as well as any 
others, is with respect to the seventeenth century publica- 
tions seriously hampered by two circumstances. In the 
first place, owing to their ephemeral nature the extant narra- 
tives about one and the same criminal are in most cases few 
in number, — too few to permit us to ascertain by compari- 
son, with any reasonable degree of certainty, what is the true 
version of his career. Secondly, even when, as in the case of 
James Hind of Commonwealth times, as many as a dozen 
pamphlets have survived, the absence of any detailed legal 
or authentic documents to provide a basis of historical fact 
makes any conclusions highly speculative. Because in every 
other instance one is thus baffled, it is peculiarly fortunate 

^ Chandler, pp. 166-168. 



lo MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

that the British Museum chances to preserve a collection of 
writings about Mary Carleton which is unusually large and 
varied, and which is not wholly lacking in legally recorded 
data. In them, if anywhere, we shall find, I believe, the clew 
to the origin of the realistic novel. 

The Mary Carleton narratives were more numerous than 
those concerning any other common criminal of her time. 
Some of them (bracketed below) are now lost, but of these the 
important ones were either wholly or largely absorbed in 
extant publications. Such bibliographical difficulties as 
they occasion are discussed in Appendix B, and a complete 
list of the narratives is given herewith : 

1663 
A news report and a burlesque advertisement in The Man 
in the Moon, no. 2 (c. May 12). 

[The Lawyer'' s Clerk Trapanned by the Crafty Whore of Canterbury] 

[A Westminster Wedding] 

The Great Trial and Arraignment of the late Distressed Lady, other- 
wise called the late German Princess. 

The Arraignment, Trial, and Examination of Mary Moders, other- 
wise Stedman, now Carleton, styled the German Princess. 

[John Carleton, A Replication.] The exact title is unknown. 

Mary Carleton, An Historical Narrative of the German Princess. 

[Mary Carleton, The Case of Madam Mary Carleton.] 

John Carleton, The Ultimum Vale of John Carleton of the Middle 
Temple, London, Gent. 

T. P., ^ Witty Combat: or, the Female Victor, a tragi-comedy, as it was 
acted by Persons of Quality in Whitson-Week with great applause. 

1671 

[Mary Carleton (pseud.). Letter from Jamaica to her Friends and 
Once Fellow-Prisoners in Newgate.] The exact title is unknown. 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES ii 

1673 

Memories of the Life of the Famous Madam Charlton, commonly styled 
the German Princess. 

Some Luck, Some Wit, being a Sonnet upon the Merry Life and Un- 
timely Death of Mistress Mary Carlton, commonly called the Ger- 
man Princess. 

An Elegy on the Famous and Renowned Lady, for Eloquence and Wit, 
Madam Mary Carlton, otherwise styled the German Princess. 

[The Deportment and Carriage of Mary Carleton, alias the German 
Princess, immediately before and at her Execution, with her last 
Speech at Tyburn, being the 22 of January, 1672-3. And her 
Epitaph] 

[The Life and Character of Mrs. Mary Moders, alias Mary Stedman, 
alias Mary Carleton, alias Mary — the Famous German Princess.] 

J. G., The Memoir es of Mary Carleton, commonly styled the German 
Princess. 

[F[rancis] K[irkman], The Counterfeit Lady Unveiled, being a full 
Account of the Birth, Life, most remarkable Actions, and untimely 
Death of that famous Cheat Mary Carleton, known by the Name of 
the German Princess.] 

1679 

F[rancis] K[irkman], The Counterfeit Lady Unveiled, " the second 
edition corrected." 

1714 

Alexander Smith, The German Princess, a Cheat, Jilt, and Thief, in 
The History of the Lives of the Most Noted Highwaymen, Footpads, 
House-breakers, Shop-lift and Cheats, of Both Sexes, second edition, 
vol. I, pp. 236-257. — This is a summary of The Counterfeit Lady. 

1732 

The Life and Character of Mrs. Mary Moders, alias Mary Stedman, 
alias Mary Carleton, alias Mary — the Famous German Princess, 
being an Historical Relation of Her Birth and Fortunes, with the 
Havock and Spoil she Committed upon the Public in the Reign of 
King Charles the Second; together with her Tragical Fall at Tyburn 
on the 22nd of January, idyS, added by way of Appendix. " The 
second edition." 



CHAPTER II 

The Carleton Publications of 1663 

For the purpose of this inquiry, we need ask concerning the 
Carleton pubHcations of 1663 only two questions. How 
reliable are they ? What light do they shed upon the jour- 
nalism of their time ? 

No confidence can be placed in the account of Mary's 
noble origin and romantic history presented in the two pam- 
phlets, " An Historical Narrative of the German Princess " 
and " The Case of Madam Mary Carleton," which she, 
aided by one or two professional writers, composed. Little 
faith, furthermore, may be taken in such obviously jour- 
nalistic productions as " The Man in the Moon," " A West- 
minster Wedding," or " The Great Trial," until they have 
been compared with more trustworthy documents. A 
reliable basis of fact is fortunately to be found in " The 
Arraignment, Trial, and Examination of Mary Moders, 
otherwise Stedman, now Carleton, styled the German Prin- 
cess." This pamphlet of sixteen pages, though probably not 
an absolutely accurate stenographic record of the court- 
room proceedings, and though not free from a few short 
passages of informal narrative and comment such as would 
find no place in a modern report, is evidently an official and 
impartial account of the trial. As such it has been received 
into the great " Collection of State Trials " by Howell and 
Cobbett, so that Mary makes her bow to Prince Posterity in 
the distinguished company of men like Sir Henry Vane and 
the Earl of Clarendon. The facts recorded in the " Arraign- 
ment " may, with some caution, be now and again supple- 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 13 

merited by such statements concerning the marriage and trial 
in John Carleton's " Ultimum Vale " and Mary's " Histori- 
cal Narrative " as confirm one another and do not lie under 
the suspicion of being designed to exculpate their authors. 
Even with these guides it remains difficult to ascertain the 
precise truth among many details of the Carle ton affair; 
but it becomes possible, with some care, to discriminate 
between facts and falsehoods respecting the principal inci- 
dents. 

The first of the two chief episodes of 1663 was the marriage, 
the true account of which is fully as entertaining as the false. 
Early in the morning of March 31 (O.S.) of that year, 
Mary arrived at Billingsgate on the tilt-boat, or covered 
barge, from Gravesend, demurely clad in "an old black 
velvet waistcoat, black silk petticoat, and black hoods drawn 
over her face." ^ In company with a parson who was at- 
tracted by her, she passed several closed inns and came to the 
Exchange Tavern in the Poultry,^ where the host, one King, 
served the strangers some wine. Having dismissed the 
parson, whose attentions were growing ardent, she aroused 
by her apparent distress and solitary condition the sympathy 
of King; and confided to him that she was Maria van Wol- 
way, an earl's daughter, who had fled from the continent in 
order to avoid being forced into marriage with a count of 
eighty years, she herself being but nineteen.^ She had, she 
said, valuables in her charge, and desired secrecy, seclusion, 
and rest. She retired to her chamber until noon, then told 
her story to Mrs. King, and posted letters abroad to her 
friends across the Channel. 

^ Historical Narrative, p. 7; Ultimum Vale, pp. 1-3. 

^ The Man in the Moon, no. 2. — Cf. Boyne's Tokens, ed. Williamson (1889- 
1891), I, p. 703. 

' Ultimum Vale, p. 2. 



14 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

At dinner next day, she met Mrs. King's brother, John 
Carleton, a youth of about eighteen and student of the law, 
who soon became enamoured of the romantic stranger. It 
appears, though John himself denies this, that after the first 
meeting he pretended to be of a higher station in life than he 
really was, and that his parents urged on what seemed to 
them an advantageous match with wealth and nobility. 
Certainly the courtship made rapid progress; and, though 
Mary used coyly to plead for delay, only about two weeks 
passed before the lovers were betrothed.^ The arrival of 
letters for Mary, seemingly from abroad, confirmed the gen- 
eral faith in her oft repeated story; and on Easter Sunday, 
April 19, the hastily arranged wedding took place, without 
a marriage license, at St. Bartholomew's church. The 
couple spent two days at Barnet; and, their license having 
now been procured, were on the twenty-first remarried in the 
same church. To establish them in a manner befitting the 
supposed rank of the bride, the older Carletons spared no ex- 
pense for fine clothes, handsome lodgings in Durham Yard, 
and equipages to drive in Hyde Park.^ A fortnight saw the 
end of this grandeur and gaiety.^ 

A friend of King's who had an acquaintance in Dover grew 
suspicious of Mary (why, we know not), and wrote to that 
town to inquire about her. In reply he received this letter : 

Dover, May the 4th, 1663. 
Sir: This morning I received your letter, dated May the 2nd instant, 
and accordingly have made inquiry. By what I can discover, it is a 
gentlewoman that is the greatest cheat in the world. She hath now 
two husbands living in this town, the one a shoemaker named Thomas 
Stedman, the other a chirurgeon named Thomas Day. She was born 
in Canterbury, her maiden name is Mary Modders, her father was a 

1 Ultimum Vale, p. 20; Historical Narrative, pp. 9-10. 

2 Ultimum Vale, p. 25; Historical Narrative, pp. lo-ii. 
^ Ultimum Vale, pp. 24 and 27. 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 15 

musician belonging to Christ Church, Canterbury. She was lately in 
Dover Castle a prisoner, taken out of a ship bound for the Barbadoes, 
where she cheated the master of 50 pounds. If it be she, I am sorry for 
your friends' misfortune. If I shall refer you to Mr. John Williams his 
wife, who liveth near St. Saviour's Dock, Newstaires, near Redriff, she 
is the master's wife of the Barbadoes ship ; and if you can prevail with 
her to go to see her, she will give you full satisfaction whether it be she 
or no. I pray you send me a line of the appearance of the business, 
and the man's name that is married to her and his calUng; for it is 
reported a minister took her up at Gravesend. My respects to your- 
self and father. I remain, your loving friend. 



Confronted by the Carletons with this information, Mary 
calmly denied the charges. But, according to the Carletons, 
her jewels, which they now had tested, proved to be counter- 
feit. John himself, though his faith was shaken by the reve- 
lations, was still under the spell of her personality, and 
desired, if possible, to dismiss her without punishment, pro- 
vided this could be done without injury to his own reputation. 
The rumor of the scandal having, however, quickly spread, 
many angry persons descended upon Mary with violent 
denunciations to the effect that she had formerly victimized 
them, — among these the Mrs. Williams mentioned in the 
fatal letter, and a shoemaker who had known Mary when she 
lodged at Mrs. Williams' house. These enraged accusers 
were not convinced by Mary's invariable denial, " I do not 
kun-now you " ; but hurried her before Justice Godfrey, who, 
on May 6, the day after the letter had been received, com- 
mitted her to prison to await trial.^ 

The curiosity of the city, excited by this scandal, was 
speedily gratified by pamphleteers. Concerning one of their 

^ Ultimum Vale, p. 27; Historical Narrative, p. 11. — Mary says that this letter 
was from a Mr. John Clay; Life and Character, p. 31. 

2 Ultimum Vale, pp. 29 and 3$. — See also, in confirmation of the entire accoimt 
given above, The Arraignment, Trial, and Examination. 



i6 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

productions, now lost, all that is ascertainable is what Mary 
pungently says in her " Case ": 

That blasphemous lie (that I am of a most sordid and base extrac- 
tion in this kingdom, no better than the daughter of a fiddler at Can- 
terbury) was first broached in an anonymous libel entitled " The 
Lawyer's Clerk Trapanned by the Crafty Whore of Canterbury " ; but 
at whose instigation I could never tell, nor did I make inquiry; but at 
last spontaneously the roguery discovered itself at my being in custody 
near Newgate.^ 

It was the devil and necessity, she declares, that induced " a 
fellow of lewd and miserable infamy for such defamatory 
pamphlets " to write it; and she refused to " poison the eyes 
of the reader " by naming him. 

Another account of the affair, perhaps even earlier than 
the above, is still preserved, being contained in " The Man in 
the Moon." The second number of this scurrilous weekly 
journal reports events from May 5 to 12, and thrice refers 
to Mary. Though many people in the city believed her un- 
justly accused, the newswriter of this sheet did not scruple 
to condemn her without delay. Not that he has any sym- 
pathy for John Carleton: he delights in ridiculing all con- 
cerned, though he does not dare print their names. He 
opens with this offensive doggerel: 

Strange news from Dover now I do 

Intend for to repeat. 
' Tis of a mob who lately did 

A London lawyer cheat. 

After ribald prose accounts of other happenings of the week, 
he presents, in about four hundred words, the Carleton affair. 
So far as the main facts are concerned, his report is fairly 
accurate; but regarding details it contains statements that, 
to say the least, seem loose. Whether these proceeded from 

1 Life and Character, p. 13. 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 17 

his imagination, or from irresponsible gossip such as that of 
servants, neighbors, or acquaintances of those concerned, is 
mere surmise. 

Here is some of his news: 

She spoke Dutch, French, and several broken languages, telling 
them her estate was £12,000 a year, and that she had jewels about her 
worth £3000 more, and a coach with six Flanders mares besides store 
of coin coming over; with which his friends agreed he should marry 
her, which was performed on Easter Day, they buying her a gown of 
£55 to grace the day, besides other necessaries of great value, coaches 
being hired to carry them to Barnet, where they continued till Tuesday, 
feasting in such a nature that some who live by the pen will know the 
price for disbursement. 

As a matter of fact, John speaks at length in " Ultimum 
Vale " about her reiterated stories of her wealth and also 
about his expenditures on her, nor had he any reason to 
minimize either; and in the light of his statements the news- 
story appears a mixture of exaggeration and invention. 
£1500 is the largest annual income Mary seems ever to have 
alleged; ^ no such generous estimates as £3000 in jewels or 
£55 for the wedding gown are elsewhere discoverable; and 
the coach with the six Flanders mares was in all likelihood 
the invention, not of Mary, but of gossips or of " some who 
live by the pen." 

What may be even more confidently held imaginary, 
relates to Mary's arrest. This, as we have seen, was actually 
occasioned by a letter from Dover, after which disclosure 
several who declared themselves her former dupes, among 
them a shoemaker, ^ accused her of other frauds. " The 
Man in the Moon," however, has it: " She was discovered 
by a journeyman shoemaker, who wrought with her husband 
at Canterbury." How much more interesting than the 

^ Ultimum Vale, p. 26. * Ibid., pp. 29-30. 



i8 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

truth ! The ingenious editor finally disposed of the affair by- 
placing at the very end of his paper a burlesque advertise- 
ment, of which the following passages illustrate the wit and 
sufficiently suggest the vulgarity: 

O yes, yes, yes! If any man or woman, in city, town, or 
country, can bring tale or tidings where the ship, pinnace, or vessel is 
landed that hath brought over the coach and sLx Flanders mares, with 
the jewels and money, belonging to the German Lady who cheated the 
London scrivener of a night lodging on Easter Eve last, let them bring 
word to the Gatehouse at Westminster, and they shall be rewarded 
when the scrivener receives her portion, with three flaps of a foxtail, 
. . . half an ounce of the vice of a swan, . . . with a pound of the 
honesty of a pettifogger. . . . 

Another vulgar journaHst, the author of " A Westminster 
Wedding" took the pains to versify his satire; and since 
Butler's " Hudibras " was the literary sensation of the hour, 
imitated its form though incapable of even distantly ap- 
proaching its wit. " A Westminster Wedding " is in part 
lost; but portions of it, amounting to over a hundred fines, 
are quoted in " The Counterfeit Lady " and adequately 
indicate its character. Like the account in " The Man in 
the Moon," it does not deviate widely from the truth about 
the more important incidents, but constantly adds pictur- 
esque details. According to it, for example, when the elder 
Carleton tried to induce Mary to sign over her property to 
John, she repfied as follows : 

" Sir," quoth the Princess, " I'll consult 

My pillow and give you result; 

But till I die I think not fit 

To part with state or wealth on^ bit. 

Besides, your son's to me but light wood 

And ha'n't received honor of knighthood, 

Though in regard of my high birth 

He 's called Lord, with cap to the earth. 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 19 

And judge, pray sir, when friends arrive, 
And see their princess scrivener's wife, 
Wil't not disparage high descent 
As garters in Rump Parliament ? " ^ 

The author gives a rather prominent place in the history of 
John's courtship to a mysterious rival or enemy, a supposed 
" foreign knight "; and to " The Man in the Moon's " state- 
ment that a Canterbury shoemaker betrayed her it adds the 
explanation that he " contrived rnalice in his horny pate " 
because, though Mary knew him, she " took no notice " of 
him.^ Mary herself, who, when " A Westminster Wedding " 
appeared, was still in jail awaiting her trial, justly called 
the satire " ribaldry " and " pitiful poetry "; ^ and we may 
as contemptuously dismiss it, for its modifications of her 
story are not numerous or important enough to be instructive. 
The trial and discharge of Mary did not put an end to the 
public curiosity about so extraordinary a person. Her 
acquittal, disconcerting to the Carletons, caused John to 
issue his " Replication," "* that is, his reply to the defendant's 
plea; and thereupon Mary, in two pamphlets, brought her 
cause, victorious in court, before the bar of public opinion. 
She was apparently not without hope that by laying the 
blame for the misunderstanding wholly upon the elder 
Carletons, and alienating John from his parents, she could 
revive in him his late infatuation. Hence, though she did 
not forbear to upbraid him vigorously, she struck an atti- 
tude of injured dignity and wounded affection, and strove to 
emphasize in her story those incidents that should manifest 
her nobility and innocence. She was, I believe, too keen not 

1 The Counterfeit Lady, pp. 72-73. 

2 Ibid., pp. 68 and 74. 

^ Life and Character, p. 70. 

* On this lost work see Historical Narrative, p. 5; Life and Character, pp. 36-37; 
and Ultimum Vale, pp. i-n and 14. 



20 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

to perceive that such an interpretation of her character 
would be more easily accepted if attention were not centered 
upon the dubious romance of her early life. In her first 
pamphlet, at any rate, though its title, " An Historical Nar- 
rative of the German Princess," seemed to promise other- 
wise, she was non-committal as regards her birth and 
breeding. " Whether I have that estate they dreamt of," 
she astutely said, " it is not material: I am not much to be 
blamed if I have it, and conceal it, since they have pursued 
me in that envious sort of which the world is witness." ^ 
Evading such matters, she devoted herself to a detailed 
explanation of how the Carletons, accrediting her with great 
rank and fortune, conspired to have John appear in her eyes 
a lord, and despite her protests hurried her in their blind 
haste into marriage. 

Important points of this story seem confirmed by the 
admissions of John Carleton, and such particulars as were 
false were doubtless not beyond the inventive ingenuity of 
Mary herself. Yet of some passages in the " Historical 
Narrative " Mary can hardly have been the sole author. 
It learnedly cites Diogenes, Themistocles, and ' a Spanish 
author I have seen " on the subject of detraction; likewise 
Valentinus Baruthius and Castaigneray on the obligation 
of knights to defend noble ladies in distress. It speaks 
exaltedly of truth, — "an amiable and delightful thing, it 
hath been no less my deliverer than it was my sanctuary; 
its precepts wiU I observe in this ensuing discourse." Who 
could doubt a lady who enhanced this high resolve by ac- 
companying it with an essay on truth that showed she had 
eagerly contemplated it in philosophy and history ? And 
here the philosophers Epimenedes, Chilo, and Anaxachus 
delineate the virtue; a priest of the reign of Augustus 

1 Historical Narrative, p. 8. 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 21 

Caesar " that was famous for not telling a lie in his whole 
life," illustrates it; and one Pamphilus, of the time of Clau- 
dius, ^' that was upon good ground suspected never to have 
told the truth all the days of his life," and was consequently- 
denied burial, furnishes a horribly edifying contrast.^ Such 
passages, like the " encomiastic poem " with which the 
pamphlet closes, and in which Mary is favorably compared 
with Cleopatra, Thalestris, and other heroines, betray 
Mary's association with a journalist who saw in her notoriety 
a profitable opportunity. John Carleton angrily looked 
upon him as a " mite-witted pedantic coxcomb "; we may 
regard him as a press-agent. Such an one seems to have 
aided her in her first pamphlet, however, not by inventing or 
elaborating incidents for her narrative, but merely by 
endeavoring to make her appear a woman of noble temper 
and of learning. For that reason his additions are of less 
significance in our eyes than certain passages in her second 
pamphlet. 

" The Case of Madam Mary Carleton " followed '' An 
Historical Narrative " after an interval of about three weeks. 
During that time Mary's efforts towards reconciliation with 
her husband had proved fruitless, but she had a resource in 
the continued interest of the sensation-loving public. In 
fact, her second appeal to it was longer and more elaborate 
than her first. More than half of it, however, was occupied 
with an expanded version of " An Historical Narrative " and 
an amended reprint of " The Arraignment, Trial, and Exam- 
ination," — reissues with which we need at present not 
concern ourselves. What makes the " Case " important is 
that herein Mary, throwing caution to the winds, lifted the 
veil of vagueness from the mystery of her youth. Since she 
was to tell the story of a lord's daughter (though not, as she 

1 Ibid., pp. 3-4, 6-7. 



22 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

herself admitted, of a princess ^) , she presented it with pomp 
and circumstance, — dedicated to the noble Prince Rupert, 
embelhshed with the lady's portrait, and recounted in her 
loftiest manner. " I knew not," she proudly averred, " what 
belonged to vulgar and plebeian customs or conditions, and 
they that idly tax my discourses and behavior with mimic 
pedantry, know not the generous emanations of a right-born 
soul." ^ The effrontery of the performance was so great that 
it would have been self-evident and intolerable, had the style 
of the " Case " not been astonishingly well adapted to its 
ends. Indeed the work is so much more ably written than 
" An Historical Narrative " that I believe it must have been 
a new press-agent who gave literary form, if nothing more, 
to the story of Mary's youth. 

Precisely to what extent the knowledge and imagination of 
her scribe assisted the untutored ingenuity of the Canter- 
bury adventuress, is indeterminable. Certainly she needed 
no one to invent the outline of her story, — that she was 
born of noble German parents who died in her early infancy, 
was brought up in a nunnery, and was educated by an Eng- 
lish governess, — for this, as appears from the " Ultimum 
Vale," ^ she had maintained since the beginning of the 
imposture. But the " Case," like her former pamphlet, 
decks forth this bare statement with trappings that she her- 
self was most probably too uncultivated to supply. We are 
shown the full range of the studies of Marie van Wolway, 
daughter of the Lord of Holmstein. From her governess, 
" Mrs. Margaret Hammond, daughter of Sir Richard Ham- 
mond, of the North of England," she learned in about one 
year the " EngHsh tongue, that locked repository of so many 
excellencies." By " Giacomo della Riva, lately of London," 
she was taught Italian. (Let us hope that he was pleased by 

1 Life and Character, pp. 15-16. ^ ibid., p. 12. ' P. 2. 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 23 

the advertisement.) As she justly says, no Enghsh spinster 
of even the best rank would be likely to know, as she does, 
" Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, English, and some- 
thing of the Oriental tongues, — all of which I pronounce 
with a Dutch dialect and idiom." Besides her severer 
studies, she enjoyed the " more facile pastimes of literature, 
romances, and other heroical ablandishments, being written 
for the most part in French." ^ 

Naturally she is not at a loss to justify her own enterprising 
journey by precedents from history and romance. " I am 
not single, or the first woman," she reminds us, " that hath 
put herself upon such hazards or pilgrimages; the stories of 
all times abound with such examples, enough to make up a 
volume. I might as well have given lustre to a romance as 
any, any, any, of those supposed heroinas." She alludes to 
the exploits of the princess of the north who was " knight 
errant in Italy and France," and of the female general who 
" followed the camp to the other world in America." She 
is too well informed to admit that her present predicament 
would be possible in other lands. In an acidulous manner, 
strangely like that of the modern feminist, she declares she 
has found false the proverb " England is a heaven for 
women "; for in her own country " the wife shares an equal 
portion with her husband in all things of weal and woe, and 
can liber intentare begin and commence and finish a suit in 
her own name "; and in Russia a bishop holds power only 
until his wife's death. Another illustration of the supposed 
author's knowledge is furnished by her scornful mention of 
" those punctual relations of Sir John Mandeville concerning 
things that were impossible." ^ 

To us the problem of special importance is not so much 
whether Mary's literary assistant supplied her with infor- 

^ Life and Character, pp. 1-9, 17. 2 ibid., pp. 3, 14-15, 68. 



24 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

mation and allusions, as whether he aided her in fictitious 
invention. It is a suspicious fact that signs of an education 
superior to her own seem clearly to appear in the relation of 
certain minor incidents which skillfully prepare her readers 
to accept an essential point in her story that otherwise would 
be strikingly improbable. The unsupported statement that 
a young woman of rank cared to leave her own country for 
the purpose of making a solitary journey to England, could 
hardly be considered plausible. But from the very outset 
of the " Case " circumstances rendering this credible are set 
forth prominently, and suggest a narrator who could draw 
on a fund of general information. Thus we are told that 
Cologne, the city of her birth, was one of the places where 
King Charles sojourned during the Commonwealth, and that 
Mary was in early life impressed by the extraordinary 
courtesy of the English gentlemen in the retinue of the royal 
exile. ^ We are led to understand how naturally her inclina- 
tion to visit their country was later strengthened, when, on 
leaving the nunnery, she went to the palace where Charles 
had dwelt at Cologne and met there the amiable English 
lady whom she invited to be her governess.^ Consequently 
we are ready to find it not wholly surprising that when cir- 
cumstances pressed her to seek a place of distant refuge she 
should turn to England. 

In explaining the immediate cause of her flight the " Case " 
departs, I believe, from the story she originally told the 
Carletons. To them she had intimated that her guardians 
were forcing her into a marriage with a gentleman of eighty 
years. In the " Case," no despotic guardians figure; she is 
an unprotected lady in distress fleeing from the distasteful 
and violent wooing of two singular gallants, who are graphi- 
cally described as follows: 

^ Ibid., pp. 1-2. 2 Ibid., pp. 7-8. 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 25 

One was a old gentleman that had fair demesnes about Leige or 
Luyck, not many miles distant from Cologne, a man of serious gravity 
and venerable aspect for his gray hairs, but disfigured with some scars 
his youthful luxury had given him, . . . He accosted me the rude 
military way, for he had been a soldado, and had caught, as he said, 
that rotten hoarse cold and snuffing in the trenches of Breda in the 
brigade of Count Henry of Nassau in Spinola's army, and had after- 
wards served Monsieur Tilly against the King of Sweden, whom he 
had seen fall at Lutzen ; and therefore by no means must be said No, 
or denied his suit, since he had never known what a repulse meant in 
his life. 

The other was a young and pale student in the mathematics, 
chemistry, and magic, like a fellow here that pretends to be secretary 
to God and Nature, and had exhausted a plentiful estate and was like 
to be a second Dr. Faustus, and like my lord threatened either a con- 
tract with me or with the devil; for having lost his projection of the 
philosopher's stone, and decocted all his money and estate, his magical 
glass showed him me, who should by my fortune make him up again. 
In short, the one said he would storm and force me; and the other 
would make me yield or else he would set Archimedes his unexperi- 
mented engine at work to remove me with him into some imknown 
world, to which he added the efficacy of his spells and conjurations.^ 

At least some traits in the characterization of these worthies, 
being evidently beyond the range of Mary's own knowledge, 
may fairly be attributed to her able collaborator. 

Another work dealing with Mary, though it appeared later 
than the " Case," turned away from the romantic mystery 
of her youth and confined itself to the Carleton episode. 
The most interesting fact about this work, " A Witty Com- 
bat: or, the Female Victor," by " T. P., Gent," is that it is a 
play, and shows a dramatist of this time, like his Eliza- 
bethan predecessors, not insensible to the sensational value 
of a contemporary episode. Though it professes to have 
been " acted by persons of quality in Whitsun-week," 1663, 

^ Life and Character, p. 11. 



26 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

I do not believe it was then performed. Whitsun-week in 
1663 ran from June 7 to 13; ^ yet no mention of the play is 
found in the "Historical Narrative," the "Case," or the 
" Ultimum Vale," which appeared respectively soon after 
June 12, late in June or early in July, and soon after July 
7.^ Presumably it was published in the summer of 1663, 
and perhaps the words " acted by. persons of quality " 
ironically refer to the real participants in the affair. In the 
spring of 1664, to be sure, " A Witty Combat," then called 
" The German Princess," was staged, with Mary herself 
(who by then must have fallen on evil days) acting the lead- 
ing part; ^ but in 1663 it remained merely a printed publica- 
tion, having a journalistic purpose like that of " The Man in 
the Moon " and " A Westminster Wedding." 

To the evidence provided by the latter documents as to the 
free treatment of incidents, the play adds little. Except for 
some farcical horseplay between a drawer and a cellarman, it 
closely follows the events as recounted in Mary's " Historical 
Narrative." With respect to the characterization of the 
persons concerned, it is more independent. The amorous 
parson who accompanied Mary to the tavern is turned into a 
dissenting minister who whines in strains like these: " A 
glass of Malaga is very comfortable, yea, even unto the 
spirits, with a toast; it does regenerate and quicken much. 
. . . 'Tis sincerity of love I bear to strangers; . . . yea, 
we are all but strangers here, and therefore assuredly we 
should love one another, yea, so the word is, even as one 
another." •* An attempt at dramatic contrast is shown in 

1 Good Friday that year fell on April 1 7, as one may see in the diary of Pepys, 
who records that because of the day " our dinner was only sugar sopps and fish." 

2 Historical Narrative, p. 5; Ultimum Vale, introduction. 

' Pepys's Diary, 15 April, 1664. — Cf. John Genest, Some Account of the Eng- 
lish Stage from 1660 to 1830, I, 51-53. 
* A Witty Combat, Act I, Scene 2. 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 27 

having King, the host, keep cautiously urging suspicions as 
to Mary, while Mrs. King eagerly accepts her pretenses, and 
advances the match with John; but the best strokes of 
characterization that the poor playwright can draw are silly 
reiterations by the couple, of phrases like " d'ye see." 
Throughout, the situation is treated as a ludicrous conflict 
between knavery and greed, in which neither Mary nor the 
Carletons deserve any admiration or pity but are one and all 
to be indiscriminately satirized. 

The last of the publications of 1663 to be considered is 
" The Great Trial and Arraignment of the German Princess," 
which is here reprinted because, even better than the other 
pamphlets, it illustrates the nature of journalism in those 
days. The true incidents of the trial are to be found in 
" The Arraignment, Trial, and Examination of Mary 
Moders," and are in the main the following. One James 
Knot of Canterbury, who had known Mary from childhood, 
identified her, and testified that he had given her in marriage 
to Thomas Stedman. The prisoner, speaking in her own 
defense, attributed the accusation of bigamy to the malice 
of the elder Carleton on failing to obtain her fortune, hinted 
that he had bribed witnesses against her, denied that she was 
Mary Moders, and declared Knot's unsupported testimony 
insufficient to condemn her. The court charged the jury to 
convict her if they believed Knot; but pointed out that if she 
had really been married previously, additional proof ought 
not to have been lacking. The jury thereupon brought in a 
verdict of not guilty. These simple facts are thus set forth 
in "The Great Trial:" 

It is not very strange to any of you all that here has lately been 
within the city of London a most prodigious project or wonderful 
cheat, betwixt the said supposed lady and her adopted lord, whose 
name I shall omit at present, for consequently it is or may be known 



28 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

too evidently abroad this city of London. Where the fault lay, I 
know not, — my judgment is to stand neuter, — but as for their 
original acquaintance and including loves betwixt both in matters of 
holy writ and sacred bands of matrimony, I shall also forbear to de- 
clare, since for that from Mr. Carleton's hand himself satisfaction hath 
been given already. Therefore I shall only instance and declare the 
manner of her trial and the matter of her fact, accordingly as it was 
judiciously argued before the bench bar in the Old Bailey on Thursday 
last, in manner thus : 

Upon Thursday morning about nine of the clock, the said lady was 
brought from Newgate to the Old Bailey, conducted by two keepers 
and some other persons of eminency, where she was placed within the 
bar, that is to say, not in the bail dock. Being come to the place, she 
gave a reverend conge to the honorable bench, in such a grace and 
gallant deportment that several spectators of that honorable society 
did argue among themselves she could be no person of any low birth 
and parentage. She stood at the bar at least half a quarter of an hour, 
playing with her fan before her face, beholding the bench with a 
magnanimous and undaunted spirit. Oyes, and silence being made, 
her indictment was read, to which she gave great attention and marked 
every word verbatim. She was indicted in the name of Mary Carle- 
ton ; that was after the name of her later husband. The tenure of the 
indictment ran thus: that she had formerly two husbands, the one a 
shoemaker in Canterbury by name William Ford, and another at 
Dover. For which evidence her persecutors had but a letter to attest 
it; and as for the shoemaker she was charged withal, there was three 
witnesses, one whereof swore point blank that she had been married 
to him above nine years. The other two gave but small information, 
being daunted in the presence of the face of justice and more especially 
by her moderate and neat-limned expressions before the bench. John 
Carleton, her now husband, was the severer prosecutor against her; 
whether 'twas for money or no, I am not to judge, but it is no strange 
thing in such cases that corruption of bribes may take place before a 
bench of justice. 

But now I shall come to the point. When the indictment was read, 
she was commanded to hold up her hand and to say guilty or not 
guilty, to which she answered in a broken EngHsh, " Not guilty, my 
Lord." It was said again, by whom she would be tried. She an- 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 29 

swered, " By the jury." And hereupon she drew off her glove and 
pointed to the most honorable bench, saying, " My Lords, I desire 
you to hear me patiently. Whereas there 's styled in my indictment 
an honorable contract in sacred bonds of wedlock with one Mr. Ford, a 
shoemaker in Canterbury, and that I was married to him nine years 
ago, and had two children by him, — to that, my Lord, I desire you 
rightly to consider, and also the worthy jury, that I am at this present 
but one-and-twenty years of age. Which by many circumstances I 
might argue it that law and nature would not grant it, though within 
this place it is not requisite to declare the reasons thereof; but accord- 
ing to my sex I shall beg pardon for the rehearsal." At which the 
grave senators admired her confidence, much more her prudence, and 
bade her speak on. 

At which words came in a bricklayer with a pretended interest that 
she was his wife, but providence or policy ordered it another way. 
There was a fair gentlewoman standing at the bar by her, much like 
unto her, to whom he addressed himself, saying, " This is my wife." 
To which the judge said, " Are you sure it is yours ? " And the old 
man, taking his spectacles out of his pocket looked her in the face again 
and said, " Yes, she is my wife; for I saw her in the street the other 
day." Then said the lady, " Good my Lord, observe this doting fel- 
low's words, and mark his mistake, for he doth not know me here with 
his four eyes ; how then is it possible that he should know me with his 
two ? " At which expression all the bench smiled. Again said she, 
" My Lord, and all you grave Senators, doth it stand anything in 
reason if you rightly behold my face that I should match with such a 
simple piece of mortality ? " Then the old fellow drew back, and said 
no more, at which there was a great hissing in the hall. And the lady 
all this while was silent, but steadfastly looking upon the bench with a 
most courageous spirit and a magnanimous countenance. If without 
reproof may I say it, she had within her cheeks a perfect vermilion. 

And after silence was given again, she said, " May it please the most 
honorable bench, and with the same words as Paul to Festus, I do 
beseech ye to hear me patiently." Which did very much argue with 
the bench that she was a person of no small education, and the proof 
of her most rare and neat accomplished deportment did also confirm 
the same. And therefore, leave being given her, she with a modest 
gesture and comely behavior leaned over the bar, constantly playing 



3© MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

with her fan before her face, as a person without blot or stain, said, 
" My Lord, and all you grave Senators of this honorable bench, here 
are many witnesses come against me, who little or at least are not 
concerned in this my trial, are brought hither to testify against me. 
But whether it be through corruption of bribes, fear of foes, or favor of 
friends, I am not worthy to judge, though I am confident there is not a 
witness appears this day but what has taken his original from the depth 
of my prosecutors' purses. I hope the wise and judicious jury will in 
their own private consultations make a just inquiry in the very bottom 
of this unjust and tyrannical prosecution which here hath brought me 
to the bar — I hope — of justice." 

At these words the judge stood up, and very earnestly desired to 
know the place of her descent. She answered that she was born at 
Cologne in Germany, which is very well known to be a place of rare 
tutoring; and so it seems indeed, for the female sex of scholars in 
Athens hardly could go beyond her. Upon these words there were 
five witnesses did declare upon oath that they knew her of a child in 
Germany. The judge replied, " At what place ? " They said, " At 
Cologne," and indeed her broken English at the bar did very much 
conclude it. Then the judge asked what was the reason she came for 
England. She answered, only to advance her fortunes. The bench 
answered, 'tis possible a woman ought to endeavor for her own inter- 
est, where fortune, time, and place gave occasion for it. 

And thereupon they presently gave a censure that she came on 
purpose to cheat some person appertaining to the royal dignity. " No," 
said she, " I thought not to cheat anybody, though many went about 
to cheat me." " Why," said another of the bench, " what thought ye 
when ye married Mr. Carleton ? " To that she answered, " My Lord, 
if any cheat was in the business, they went about to cheat me, I not 
them; for they thought by marriage of me to dignify themselves and 
advance all their relations, and upon that account were there any 
cheat, they cheated themselves." These expressions made the bench 
something the more sensible of her condition, and thereupon the jury 
brought in their verdict of not guilty. 

And then began a great noise throughout the whole court, and most 
of it was to her great applause and brave acute wit. No proofs could 
be made that she had any other husband than Mr. Carleton, her now 
husband; by whom the bench by their wise and good discretions did 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 31 

according to the laws of God and the laws of men, that he should keep 
her. And upon this indictment she said, " My Lord, though I am 
acquit from all these crimes which is falsely laid against me, what shall 
I do for my clothes taken from me ? " The judge said, " We ought 
not to look after that; you have now a husband to do it." Which 
words struck a great terror to the persecutors. So the bench acquitted 
her from all scandalous matters alleged against her, and she in a comely 
and modest behavior departed. 

In weighing the credibility of this account, it is not neces- 
sary to question the picturesque details in the description of 
Mary, whose confident bearing doubtless helped her to 
triumph. Obviously the " Great Trial " gives a false impres- 
sion by passing so lightly over the long and important testi- 
mony of James Knot. The speeches which it places in 
Mary's mouth are not authentic; her main contentions are 
not given, and her incidental remarks are distorted beyond 
recognition. She probably did not " answer in a broken 
English." That five witnesses swore they knew her as a 
child in Germany is a fivefold lie. A more ingenious false- 
hood is that concerning the old, near-sighted bricklayer. 
Such a person, as we know from the official report of the 
testimony of a minor witness,^ really sought to identify Mary 
as his wife, and blundered in the attempt; but this took place 
in jail before the trial. The clever author of the " Great 
Trial " not only elaborates the episode, but places it where it 
will be most astonishing and dramatic, — in the court-room 
during Mary's speech. In short, his account, apparently 
designed to make Mary a popular heroine, repeatedly 
sacrifices the true to the sensational. 

The pamphlets which we have examined will suggest to 
even a casual reader that the Restoration journalist some- 
times betrayed the traits of his modern, " yellow " descen- 

1 The Arraignment, Trial, and Examination, testimony of Elizabeth Collier. 



32 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

dant, — a malicious soul, a vulgar taste, and a lying tongue. 
To the student of the realistic novel, they have a deeper signi- 
ficance. Though Mary's exploit, compared with a political 
event or a great catastrophe, was unimportant news, five or 
six journalists thought their craftsmanship not wasted on so 
mean and domestic a theme. They relied on interesting, not 
so much the cultivated literary class as the common pubhc, 
— which, in the next century the real arbiter of literary suc- 
cess, came to support the vogue of the novel. To it some of 
them sought to appeal by casting about the accused woman 
the glamor of innocence in distress ; others, by satirizing both 
the deceiver and her victims. Their styles, which varied 
according to their purposes, ranged from coarse and incor- 
rect colloquialism to stilted and pedantic bombast, but now 
and then showed flashes of vividness. Yet even in the pas- 
sages which seemed most vivid, these writers were not always 
recording actual observation. As long as the incident 
recounted might be popularly interesting, they did not 
scruple in details to pervert the truth : they aimed, not to be 
veracious, but to seem veracious. In other words, they 
made it their business to gratify the love of wonder without 
alarming the sense of fact. The very art which the novelist 
was to practice at great length, they were trying in short and 
awkward flights. 



CHAPTER III 

The Minor Publications of 1673 

Nine years elapsed before the career of Mary Carleton again 
became an attractive subject to a considerable number of 
writers. In the interval, the only occasion on which she even 
slightly reawakened public attention was in 1671, when she 
was convicted of theft and transported to Jamaica. There- 
upon appeared a little pamphlet, described by a contem- 
porary as follows: " In the time of her exile, we had a letter 
from her from Port Royal in Jamaica, to all her fellow 
sufferers in Newgate; wherein she, or the author that writ 
it, gives a drolling, romantic account of her voyage thither, 
arrival there, and several other fabulous fancies." ^ The 
reports in this letter of Mary's acts and feelings are meagre 
and unimportant; and the pamphlet interests us only as 
adding to the instances of journalistic invention that we have 
observed. Of greater value are the publications which 
appeared when Mary, having returned to England, was 
caught again, found guilty of stealing a piece of plate, and on 
January 22, 1673, hanged at Tyburn. This ignominious end 
called forth no less than seven publications. 

Three of these, — an account of her last days, and two 
verse satires, — are to us of little consequence. " Some 
Luck, Some Wit," termed a sonnet, is a crude verse satire 
in nine stanzas, and was composed before Mary's execution. 
It was probably based on the shortest of her biographies, 
the "Memories,"^ and with coarse merriment recounts some 

^ The Counterfeit Lady, p. 179. — The letter itself may be found in The 
Memoires of Mary Carleton, pp. 54-63. 

^ Issued, probably in December, 1672, by the same publisher as Some Luck, 
Some Wit, and recounting the same incidents. 

33 



34 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

of her alleged frauds on persons of various trades and pro- 
fessions, puns on each victim's occupation being the author's 
fixed idea of wit. Equally despicable is " An Elegy on 
Madam Mary Carlton," a mock lament in heroic couplets, 
surrounded, like elegies on the great, with a lugubrious black 
border. " The Deportment and Carriage of Mary Carleton 
immediately before and at her Execution," a prose pamphlet, 
gives, occasionally with vividness, circumstantial details of 
her last days; it mentions that Mary was attended by her 
sister, who here appears for the first time. More than a 
third of the work is occupied with theological remarks, sup- 
posed to be addressed to Mary by a gentleman concerned in 
her spiritual welfare, but perhaps reflecting the denomina- 
tional controversies of the day rather than the real thoughts 
of the condemned woman. Such seventeenth century prison 
tracts lie under a general suspicion of being untrustworthy, 
and the " Deportment and Carriage " is very likely not to be 
exempted therefrom; but since whatever falsification it may 
contain affects only one episode, the probably insoluble 
problem of the degree of its authenticity need not here be 
even attempted. What interests us now is not invention 
within a narrow compass, — for this we have sufficiently 
noticed in the journalism of 1663, — but invention that 
ranges more widely. 

Before examining whether sustained fabrication is to be 
found in the four biographies of Mary Carleton, it is well to 
consider what credible information as to her career may have 
been accessible to their authors. Perhaps some of the lesser 
publications of 1663 were no longer easily obtainable; but 
it is clear that the more important ones could still be had, for 
their aid is acknowledged and employed in the biographies. 
The comparatively trifling assistance of the " Letter from 
Jamaica" (1671), though this was regarded by some as a 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 35 

hoax, was likewise at hand. Add to these documents the 
" Deportment and Carriage " (1673), and any news-sheets of 
December, 1672, and January, 1673, that may have reported 
Mary's last appearance ; and you have the printed materials 
that her biographers might draw upon. A large portion 
thereof, however, — namely the account of her noble birth 
and her romantic youth abroad, — was known to be false, 
and was consequently rejected by them. When the alleged 
impeccable young lady of wealth and nobility had shown 
herself willing to act in a play that characterized her an 
adventuress, and had presently sunk to the level of a petty 
and twice convicted thief, the faith which some persons had 
in 1663 placed in her narrative was of course irreparably 
destroyed. 

In place of the romance there was, to be sure, the true 
story; but even if one painstakingly sought for this in John 
Carleton's " Ultimum Vale," and in the testimony of James 
Knot at her trial, the discoverable data, though important, 
would be far less numerous and interesting than those which 
imagination had created. All the printed sources of accept- 
able information that biographers had on Mary's career 
before its final catastrophe, therefore, were certain rather 
meagre and colorless facts concerning her youth, the full and 
lively details of her imposture on the Carletons in 1663, and 
some trifling and dubious statements about her transporta- 
tion in 1 67 1. The gaps in her record from 1635 to 1663, 
from 1664 to 1671, and from 1671 to the end of 1672, were so 
large, and respecting the first two periods so difficult to fill 
from other than written sources, that one would not be sur- 
prised if the biographies had little or nothing to tell about her 
life during those intervals. 

The very first of the biographies, however, the " Memories 
of the Life of Madam Mary Charlton," which was apparently 



36 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

hurried forth immediately after her death sentence/ is not 
silent on those previously unchronicled years. Indeed, it 
professes to set forth " the whole series of her actions, with 
aU their intrigues and subtle contrivances, from her cradle to 
the fatal period of her reign at Tyburn." ^ To the well 
known Carleton episode it devoted only three of its seventeen 
pages. Of Mary's enterprises between 167 1 and 1672 it 
reported only one, — the robbery of a young apothecary who 
believed her a rich citizen's niece. On her activities from 
1664 to 167 1 it was discreetly reticent. But as to the days 
most. remote, from 1635 to 1663, it supplied new information 
that was extensive enough to occupy nearly one-half its 
entire space. 

The Canterbury musician's daughter, it had learned, had 
been a prodigy who at the tender age of five read perfectly. 
Ingratiating herself with the children of the rich, and admit- 
ted to their homes, she had begun to pilfer, — forming a 
habit which her mother, " after many a pitch battle," had 
come to regard as too profitable to suppress. At fourteen 
Mary succeeded in attaching herself to the company of a 
young lady who was journeying to France, where she 
remained four years, acquiring not only the language of the 
country but also a pert and self-confident manner. Her 
many wooers she systematically fleeced; and an unfortunate 
tailor who had paid her well for the pleasure of her society, 
she caused to be convicted of housebreaking. After a short 
period in Canterbury, during which she married a shoemaker, 
she returned to the continent. At Amsterdam, passing for 
the Duchess of Rumford, she cheated a jeweller, who found 
too late that a box, supposedly full of precious stones, which 

^ Though its title-page intimates that the narrative extends to Mary's execution, 
" January 23, 1672 " (it really took place the twenty-second), it concludes with the 
sentence of death on January 17. 

^ Title-page. 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 37 

she had left him as a surety, contained pebbles. Fleeing to 
London, she there married an old miserly bricklayer, and 
straightway ran off with his hoard of two hundred pieces of 
gold. Her last escapade before imposing on the Carletons, 
was to allure the son of a rich Kentish grazier, get the money 
he had received for his father's cattle, make him dead 
drunk, and sell him to the master of a Barbadoes ship. 

Not only does this narrative omit so essential a fact as 
Mary's bigamous marriage with Day, but it contains partic- 
ulars of her early adventures that stand in curious contrast 
to those previously noted in the publications of 1663. A 
close reader of the latter might observe the casual and brief 
mention of a few frauds that Mary was accused of having 
committed in her previous career; ^ but, except in the case of 
the deserted bricklayer, there is no resemblance between 
those tricks and the ones so fully described in the " Mem- 
ories." If we are to trust its author, therefore, we must 
credit him with the remarkable feat of securing in 1673 
specific details concerning many of Mary's youthful crimes, 
only one of which her prosecutors in 1663, aided by the full 
light of the publicity of a scandalous trial, had been able to 
find. 

The author of " The Life and Character of Mrs. Mary 
Moders " was likewise a conqueror of difficulties. New 
information about Mary's youth, he did, to be sure, not 
venture to disclose. He reprinted, as the first and by far 
largest portion of his work, her " Case " ; and contented him- 
self with discrediting its romantic account of her origin by 
adding in his " Appendix " her dying confession that she 
was really Mary Moders of Canterbury and a bigamist. As 
to the last two years of her life, he could report more than the 
author of the " Memories." Besides the incident already 

^ Life and Character, p. 34; Ultimum Vale, pp. 28-38. 



38 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

related by the latter, — her fraud upon the young apothe- 
cary, — he could tell of her robbery of a fellow-lodger, a 
watchmaker, whom with their landlady she invited to the 
theatre, slipping away to rifle his rooms before the others 
returned; and also of her final capture by bailiff Fisher, who 
was searching a house for another criminal and by chance 
" unawares came upon her Highness, who was walking in her 
chamber in a rich nightgown, with a letter upon her table 
directed for one Hyde, a notorious robber, by which she was 
discovered." 

The especial achievement of this biographer, however, was 
to supply the wholly missing data of the long interval be- 
tween 1664 and 1 67 1. It now for the first time transpired 
that Mary, after her brief and inglorious appearance on the 
stage, had become the mistress of a Mr. Chamberlain, whom 
she presently robbed of his valuables and eluded. Then she 
pretended to be a wealthy young lady, and was courted by a 
gentleman named Woodson, whom she left the poorer by 
three hundred pounds. Establishing herself in a richly 
furnished lodging house, she arranged to have the funeral of 
one of her relatives take place therefrom, the landlady orna- 
menting the room where the cofhn stood with silver candle- 
sticks and other plate, all of which Mary stole the night 
before the appointed ceremony, leaving behind her the cofhn, 
filled with brickbats. In Lombard Street she bought silks 
worth twenty pounds, had them laid in her coach, and gave 
the slip to the clerk who was to ride home with her and get 
the money for them. On two weavers and a laceman in 
Spitalfields she played a similar trick. At another lodging 
house she invited the landlady to join a birthday party, to 
which " several of her sharping companions came richly 
habited," and at which the landlady partook so freely that 
she fell asleep and was easily robbed of silver and handsome 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 39 

gowns. Besides committing many other successful thefts 
in London taverns before her capture and transportation, 
Mary " drew in and trepanned a young lawyer at Hesson in 
Middlesex of one hundred pounds." These incidents the 
author of the " Appendix," in four closely printed pages, 
related with the succinct precision of a good newspaper. 
Exhibiting a power to penetrate the obscurity of Mary's life 
which was second only to that of the author of the " Mem- 
ories," he managed to discover in the unknown period 
from 1664 to 1 67 1 some eight of her exploits; and even 
though several of these had occurred so long ago as nine 
years, he could usually name the localities where they took 
place and the persons victimized. 

A performance less remarkable for the novel disclosure of 
bygone incidents, is the third biography, " The Memoires of 
Mary Carle ton." Though longer than either of the others, 
it records little of the periods 1635 to 1663, and 1664 to 167 1. 
As to her subsequent career it offers some new particulars. 
It declares that on her transportation to Jamaica she was 
set at liberty as a reward for discovering a murderous plot 
against the captain of the ship that bore her thither. She 
employed her freedom on that island in scandalous living 
and profitable cheats. Journeying to Holland, she there fell 
in with some kindly persons who enabled her to take passage 
home and gave her letters of introduction to their English 
relatives. From the latter she stole ten pounds, frustrated 
pursuit by escaping through the back door of a tavern, and 
then undertook that series of tricks, including the already 
mentioned frauds upon the apothecary and the watchmaker, 
which led to her final arrest. 

Whence could the biographers have obtained their knowl- 
edge of all these hitherto unpubHshed incidents ? An 
interesting explanation on that point is offered by the follow- 



40 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

ing remarks in the preface of the "Memoires": "The 
author had all the help and assistance imaginable to accom- 
plish this work, and that by order too. 'Tis true that the 
former part of her life is somewhat obscure, and taken up 
upon credit, though from persons of known integrity; the 
latter, more notorious and certain, being related by those who 
were eye and ear witnesses of her several particularized 
actions and discourses that are mentioned in this treatise." 
That a good many persons must severally have known vari- 
ous episodes in Mary's life is obvious. There were, for 
example, the witnesses at her last trial; in fact, the " Mem- 
oires" says that one of the defrauded landladies identified 
her in prison, and that the watchmaker whom she robbed 
" found her this last bout at the Marshalsea," adding that 
he " himself related the story " therein recorded.^ Then 
there were the witnesses at her trial in 167 1, and many of her 
other victims since 1664. There was both the criminal 
world, including her accomplices, and the police world. 
There was, perhaps, that mysterious sister of hers, men- 
tioned in the " Deportment and Carriage." If what all 
these knew could have been gathered, the minutest biography 
would not astonish us. We have forgotten the best informed 
"eye and ear witness," — Mary herself, — whom, indeed, 
the author of the " Memories " proclaims as his authority.^ 
The question, however, is not what these knew, but what 
they would tell. 

Large as the number of possible informants was, it is ante- 
cedently probable that they were in general not communi- 
cative. One of the biographers, the author of the " Life and 
Character," does not attribute his knowledge to any one of 
them. The other two refer specifically only to Mary, to a 
landlady, to a watchmaker, and to " the party that was also 

1 Memoires, pp. 74, 83-87, 92. * Title-page. 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 41 

defrauded by her " after her return from Jamaica.^ Evi- 
dently they appreciated the value of something like a definite 
reference, yet the greater part of their information they 
either left unsupported by any reference whatever or vaguely 
attributed to " eye and ear witnesses." Curiously enough, 
they never thus allude to the bailiffs and turnkeys, who 
might well recall portions of the record of so interesting a 
criminal, and had comparatively little reason for refusing to 
talk about it. The number of Mary's victims who would tell 
anything was probably much limited by the fact that male 
victims of an adventuress, — especially such citizens of 
reputed respectability as, according to the biographers them- 
selves, were her prey in nearly every one of her important 
enterprises, — are strongly disinclined, even when revenge 
may thus be taken, to disclose to the public that they have 
had any kind of dealings with so scandalous a woman. An 
even greater danger of compromising themselves would tend 
to make reserved Mary's associates among criminals. The 
sister who is said to have comforted her last days, is not likely 
to have added to her notoriety by blabbing about her youth- 
ful misdemeanors. And as for Mary herself, since all the 
activities which her biographers in 1673 report for the first 
time are discreditable to her, she is unlikely to have disclosed 
them, except possibly in her dying confession, — and that, 
as given by the biographers themselves, did not contain them. 
She was not one of those criminals who incautiously vaunt 
their deeds. The shrewdly non-committal character of her 
" Historical Narrative " is noteworthy. Everyone that 
came to know her, whether in 1663 or 1673, was struck by her 
resolute denial of accusations, and by her evasive wit in 
turning leading questions aside. ^ 

1 Memoires, pp. 74, 83-87, 92; Memories, title-page. 

^ E. g., Ultimum Vale, pp. 30-33; Memoires, pp. 74 and 108; Counterfeit Lady, 
pp. ii and 203. 



42 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

Yet these considerations do not make it impossible that 
some of the new matter in the biographies may really have 
been learned from the testimony of witnesses who had 
nothing to lose by coming forward, from the reminiscences 
of the police, or from the gossip of prisoners. That such 
information might be unreliable is nothing to the point; what 
concerns us is not whether the biographers were credulous 
but whether they were imaginative. And, with regard to a 
large portion of their contributions, this is something we 
shall never know. Take, for instance, the episode of the 
watchmaker. Here is an escapade which, though said in the 
" Memoires " to have been the one for which Mary was held 
in December, 167 2, Ms despite the court-room publicity which 
that would imply, apparently quite unknown to the author 
of the " Memories, " is certainly not the crime for which she 
was condemned, and is related in the " Life and Character " 
and the " Memoires " with singular differences regarding 
important incidents.^ It looks suspicious. Yet the alleged 
happening was recent, and was exceptional among Mary's 
frauds in that its two victims might fully testify in court, or 
talk to news-gatherers, without compromising themselves. 
What part, or what version, of it is true, if any, we have no 
means of ascertaining. We cannot test this occurrence, or 
the others between 1664 and 1672, by comparison with 
official records; for the court trials of Mary in 167 1 and in 
1672-1673, unlike that of 1663, are not found reported. 
Other tests are inconclusive. That there are discrepancies 
between the testimony of James Knot in 1663 and the ac- 
count of Mary's youth in the " Memories," does not con- 

1 Page 92. 

* Cf. Life and Character, pp. 73-74, and Memoires, pp. 83-87. — In the former 
Mary herself commits the robbery; in the latter, an accomplice. The maid's part 
varies; and both the locality and the stolen goods are differently described. 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 43 

clusively show that she did not do some of the things related 
in the latter, still less that all the contributions of the 
" Memories " are untrue. That several of her tricks, — 
like the one with the brickbat laden cofhn, — resemble those 
recorded in the earlier literature of roguery, would not pre- 
vent Mary from having actually imitated them. From 
every attempt to distinguish between fact and fiction we 
return, as in the case of the other criminal biographies of the 
time, thoroughly baffled. The presence of imaginary inci- 
dents we must suspect, and we may assume, but we cannot 
prove. 

If we did assume that much of the new matter really was 
fictitious, we should face the interesting question whether 
these three biographies might not be considered reahstic 
novels, — at least in a rudimentary stage of development. 
Two of them cannot be so regarded, because they are much 
too brief: the " Appendix " of the " Life and Character " 
contains less than twenty- three hundred words; the " Mem- 
ories," less than five thousand. The " Memoires," how- 
ever, might perhaps not be excluded from consideration on 
the ground of brevity. It is twenty thousand words in 
length, longer than Mrs. Behn's " The Fair Jilt," and only 
slightly shorter than her "Oroonoko"; and its scale of 
presentation is thus large enough to allow sufficient detail in 
the treatment of those episodes, possibly invented, which 
deal with Mary's career after her escape from Jamaica. 

Though the " Memoires " is the longest of the three biog- 
raphies, it contains, as I have already remarked, propor- 
tionately the least amount of new matter; and the added 
episodes are too few in number to give to the whole the gen- 
eral character of a work of fiction. Conversely, though in 
the " Memories " and the " Appendix " the new incidents are 
relatively numerous, the narrow limits of those works prevent 



44 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

that fullness of treatment expected in even a short novel. 
Other essential qualities of fiction are likewise absent. There 
is little or no effort to link together the parts of the action; 
the seven new escapades in the " Appendix," for example, are 
so unrelated to one another that their arrangement seems 
almost haphazard. The motivation and characterization 
are, in all cases, of the vaguest. The " Memoires," in this 
important respect less deficient than the other two narratives, 
intersperses frequent satiric comment on Mary's conduct; 
but even herein there is next to no endeavor to imagine and 
describe her thoughts and feelings. 

Thus, even after assuming that portions of these biogra- 
phies are fictitious, we should be forced to conclude that at 
this time the real art of fiction was confined to the romance ; 
and that, though some authors might be trying to write 
novels of common life, they did not know how to do so. 
And this conclusion, which simply confirms what is generally 
accepted, would be built on a mere hypothesis; for, though 
these biographies may at times read suspiciously like fabri- 
cations, they cannot be satisfactorily proved to be, in the 
main, other than the truthful narratives they profess to be. 
It is this perplexing situation which gives peculiar value to 
the fourth biography of Mary Carleton. 



CHAPTER IV 

"The Counterfeit Lady" A Fiction 

The author of " The Counterfeit Lady," Francis Kirkman, 
repeatedly assures us of the exceptional diligence, caution, 
and accuracy with which he has composed this biography 
of Mary Carleton. He writes as follows: 

You have had some account of her by books already printed, but I 
think as this is the last so it is the best. ... If I should promise to 
give you a true account of her whole life, I should deceive you; for how 
can truth be discovered of her who was wholly composed of falsehood ? 
But that I might not err from the truth in what I shall relate to you, I 
have took some pains to gain intelligence. Some I had from herself, 
some from those who were considerably concerned with her, and some 
from Mr. John Carleton, her unfortunate husband; and what I could 
not gather from these informations, I have supplied by books which 
have been formerly written of her, both in defense and against her. 
And I have carried so even a hand in my belief of what I read, that I 
hope I shall do her no wrong in misrepresenting anything of her.^ . 

That Kirkman did not wish aU of his information to be con- 
sidered indirect is evident not only from the above words but 
from such phrases as these, which appear in various passages 
of his book: " as they expressed themselves to me," " from 
one of them I had it," " they lately gave me this account of 
their misfortunes," and " her husband Carleton told me 
within these few days." ^ He says or insinuates that he has 
interviewed, besides Mary and John, " those that knew her 
when young," some of those who professed to have been her 
lovers, and several of her victims between 1664 and 1673.^ 

^ The Counterfeit Lady, preface and pp. 3-4. 
* Ibid., pp. 74, 89, 118, 154. Cf. pp. IS, 76-77, 95, 107, 210. 
' Ibid., pp. ix, 89, 107-108, 118, 154 (the figures for the pages of the preface, 
which are unnumbered in the book, are my own). 

45 



46 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

None of his predecessors professes to know so many witnesses 
of Mary's career. 

If Kirkman actually was so inquisitive, and so fortunate, 
as to make the acquaintance of all these authorities, we 
should expect him to report many previously untold inci- 
dents. But if for the moment we disregard what he may 
have learned from Mary herself, we cannot consider that his 
extensive inquiries were rewarded with valuable discoveries. 
From " those that knew her when she was young," he learned 
the titles of the romances she had read; and from " several 
idle fellows " who had wooed her, he elicited testimony fav- 
orable to her reputation: but even these pieces of informa- 
tion were not surprisingly novel, for the " Memories " had 
mentioned her precocity as a reader, and the "Appendix" 
John Carleton's opinion that she was no common prostitute.^ 

With those two somewhat doubtful exceptions, Kirkman's 
informants gave him apparently no fresh knowledge of any 
important event in Mary's career. Further details about 
already recorded episodes they might give him, but that was 
all. It is decidedly significant that their versions of these 
episodes employ the phraseology of the already published 
accounts, as is shown, for example, in the following cases : ^ 

Appendix, p. 71 Counterfeit Lady, p. 89 

Many of those who rejoiced at Many of those that were now 

her acquittal and deliverance so glad, had little cause for it 

from prison, had little cause for afterwards; for I know some that 

it afterwards, as will appear by were then there present, and 

the sequel; for some who had were, as they expressed them- 

even visited her with congratula- selves to me, mighty well pleased 

1 Ibid., pp. 9, 107-108; Memories, p. 4; Appendix, p. 72. — Her Case (Life 
and Character, p. 9) speaks of her reading romances. All of the five romances 
Kirkman names are in the list recommended by him in his preface to his transla- 
tion of Don Bellianis of Greece (1664-1673), See also his Unlucky Citizen 
(1673), p. 13 ff. 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 



47 



tions at her lodgings, were the 
very persons not long after 
cheated by her of a considerable 
quantity of plate; and then they 
cursed her, as now they magnified 
her for a great wit, beauty, and 
brave woman. 



Appendix, p. 72 

Not to belie her, she was not 
yet much guilty of the crime of 
incontinency. Her husband 
Carleton often saying that he did 
not at all believe her to be en- 
joyed by everyone that courted 
her, that she had no great incli- 
nation that way. 



that the German Princess had 
come off so well, these very per- 
sons were not long after cheated 
by her of a considerable quantity 
of plate; and then they cursed 
her as much as now they magni- 
fied her for a great wit and brave 
woman. 

Counterfeit Lady, p. 107 

Not to belie her, she was not 
yet much guilty of that crime of 
incontinency. Her husband 
Carleton told me that he did 
not at all believe her to be en- 
joyed by everyone that courted 
her, that she had no great incli- 
nation that way, and if she did, 
it was not with any that brought 
their half crown, crown or half a 
piece, it must be greater kind- 
nesses than these and some con- 
siderable acquaintance and knowl- 
edge of the party. 

Such instances, more of which will appear in the course of 
this discussion, combined with the unoriginal character of 
the information, lead us gravely to distrust Kirkman's 
ascription of his knowledge to personal interviews with 
Mary's acquaintances and victims. 

Only Mary herself could have communicated to Kirkman 
some of the interesting matters he pretends to know, — 
especially her emotions, thoughts, and motives, on various 
occasions during her career.^ Doubtless he, like many 
others, went to see Mary in prison; but that he wormed so 
much private and damaging information out of her as appears 
in " The Counterfeit Lady," is very unlikely. Even for an 

^ E. g., Counterfeit Lady, p. 112. 



48 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

habitual criminal she was, as I have remarked already, 
unusually close-mouthed. On this point Kirkman himself 
says: " She was too cunning to confess anything that might 
turn to her damage," and " Had she given any account her- 
self of her actions, she could best have done it; but as she 
acted them with all privacy, so she desired to conceal them, 
and she would never answer any particular question, nor 
would she own any particular action: if any told her they 
had heard she had twenty husbands, and desired to know the 
truth, she would answer that she had been told she had fifty, 
but would not answer punctually to any question." ^ He 
neglected, however, to explain why a woman of such marked 
discretion should furnish him with extraordinarily confiden- 
tial information. Had he professed less knowledge of her 
devious purposes, we might believe him more. 

In addition to these dubious relations with his alleged 
informants, there are other grounds for doubting Kirkman. 
The " Appendix," as we have seen, recounts about eight of 
Mary's escapades between 1664 and 1671; but it does not 
indicate whether they are all arranged in the order of their 
occurrence; nor, what is more important, does it show that 
they had any connection with one another. When, for 
example, it has told how Mary cheated two weavers and a 
laceman out of some goods, it abruptly goes on to tell how 
she robbed a mantua-maker " where she once lodged." 
One might transpose any of the incidents without noticeable 
effect on the account as a whole. But in " The Counterfeit 
Lady " this would be impossible. The order of the incidents 
remains precisely as in the " Appendix," but now each of 
them appears causally connected with the following. It is 
because Mary has stolen goods on her hands that she seeks 
lodgings at a tailor's, for there she may have them made into 

' Ibid., pp. 203 and ii. 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 49 

a dress. (The episodes are vouched for in the character- 
istic statement, " Reader, let me tell you and assure you 
that the three last adventures, two whereof were with the 
weaver, and the third and last with the tailor, are certainly 
true; for they are both my relations, and lately gave me this 
account of their misfortunes." ) ^ If the eight incidents 
first chronicled in the *' Appendix " really occurred in pre- 
cisely the order that in *' The Counterfeit Lady " has become 
fixed, and if they thus led one to the other, it is more than 
strange that the author of the " Appendix," though appar- 
ently unconscious of their relationship, placed them correctly. 

Were the case against Kirkman's veracity to rest at this 
point, it might be said in his defense that the facts adduced, 
though highly suspicious, do not incontestably demonstrate 
deliberate and sustained fabrication on his part. That he 
collected his information directly from witnesses, was evi- 
dently a false pretense to enhance the authoritative appear- 
ance of the biography; but is it not possible that he considered 
the information itself substantially true ? May he not have 
sincerely believed the episodes recorded in the " Memoires " 
and the " Appendix," and linked them together according 
to what seemed to him their probable connection ? Was he 
not trying to surmise the truth rather than intentionally 
composing fiction ? These desperate objections may be met 
by considering a certain passage in Kirkman's version of 
Mary's youth. 

It will be recalled that by 1673 " The Case of Madam 
Mary Carleton" (1663), with its elaborate account of her 
noble origin, had been wholly discredited. The authors of 
the " Memories " and the " Memoires " rejected it, and even 
he who republished it contradicted its claims in his " Appen- 
dix." Kirkman himself says: " This was but a romance," 

' Life and Character, pp. 74-75; Counterfeit Lady, pp. 1 50-1 51 and 154. 



50 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

— and adds, " she had told this lie so often that she at last 
believed it herself to be true." ^ An integral part thereof 
was the explanation that " Maria van Wolway," daughter 
of the " Lord of Holmstein," had fled to England because 
she was pestered with the attentions of unwelcome suitors. 
One of these imaginary gentry, the " soldado " whose descrip- 
tion I have previously quoted,^ Kirkman evidently thought 
too picturesque to abandon; for he introduced him into " The 
Counterfeit Lady." After telling us that Mary, when her 
bigamous marriage with Day had brought her into trouble, 
fled to the continent, he proceeds to recount her adventures 
there in the following important passage : 

She, after some rambles about the countries, fixed at Cologne. 
When she arrived there, she, being the mistress of a considerable sum 
of money, took up her lodging at a house of entertainment there and 
lived in the greatest splendor she had ever done. And, as it is usual 
in England for ladies and persons of quality to go in the summer time to 
Epsom or Tunbridge Wells, so it is as customary to go to the Spa, a 
place well known in those parts. Her designs, without all question, 
were to advantage herself, and she intended to use her best artifices 
upon that occasion. But fortune was so favorable to put such an 
adventure upon her as the Hke hath seldom been heard of, and thus it 
was. 

As she was one evening walking in one of those pleasant walks that 
were adjoining to those medicinal waters, she was met and accosted by 
a gentleman whom she thus described. He was an old gentleman that 
had fair demesnes about Leige or Luyet, not many miles distant from 
Cologne, a man of serious gravity and venerable aspect for his gray 
hairs, but disfigured with some scars his youthful luxury had given 
him, . . J This man, whom she herself thus described, accosted her 
the rude military way, for he had been a soldado, and had caught as 
he said, that rotten hoarse cold and snuffing in the trenches of Breda 

' Counterfeit Lady, p. 6. 
^ Supra, p. 25. 

' The two lines here expunged are word for word identical with those expunged 
on page 25. 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 51 

in the brigade of Count Henry of Nassau in Spinola's army, and had 
afterwards served Monsieur Tilly against the King of Sweden, whom 
he had seen fall at Luthen. 

This gentleman meeting and accosting her, as if she had been long 
known to him, raised some wonder, for she could not believe herself to 
be known at that place. But she soon found he was mistaken in her, 
for in his applications and discourse he gave her the title of Madam 
Maria, and sometimes of Wolway. She could not tell what to imagine 
when he called her by the right name of Maria, but when he added the 
other of Wolway she was sensible of his mistake. But she, finding 
him civil enough in his deportments and actions, and withal that his 
pretentions were amorous, she permitted him to proceed in his dis- 
course, which he did in such manner that he would not be denied his 
suit, since, as he said, he had never known what a repulse meant in his 
life. Our new made Madam not finding any prejudice likely to accrue 
by her admitting him, gave him such answers as were indifferent and 
only complimental, and desired for that time to retire home to her 
lodging. He, understanding her mind, readily attended her, and at 
her arrival there after some few words of course they parted. 

She was glad she was rid of him, that she might consider of the 
adventure; but she could not gather any profitable or advantageous 
meaning of herself without the help of her landlady. To whom she 
having discovered what had happened, and she having seen this 
inamorato, told her his quality, for he was very well known there. 
And she, being now acquainted with this, desired to know, if she might, 
the reason of his mistake in her name. To this she received a satis- 
factory answer, for her landlady also told her that there was such a 
lady hving at Cologne, or else in the nunnery of the Barefooted Clares, 
who was of that name of Maria Van Wolway, and whom she had seen, 
and who indeed did very much resemble her. 

This discourse of the landlady did not only satisfy but please our 
new madam ; and she, who was always ready-witted on such occasions, 
did purpose to make some advantage of his adventure, and therefore 
presently applied herself to her landlady, desiring her advice in this 
mistake. " Truly," said the landlady, " I cannot think it will be any 
disadvantage to you to continue the mistake; for although the gentle- 
man is old, yet he is of great estate, and if he will deceive himself let 
him, you cannot but reap some advantage thereby, for he can do no 



52 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

less than make you some presents, which I advise you to accept of; and 
so you may continue your acquaintance with him so long as it shall 
stand with your benefits." Our lady was not deaf to this discourse, 
but listened very attentively and resolved to follow her landlady's 
directions, and not questioning but by her assistance to reap some 
profit. And her landlady was well enough pleased to engage in this 
affair for her own interest, because she expected some profits in the 
visits which she expected he would make there. And as they pro- 
jected it so it fell out, for our soldado the next day met his mistress 
and, waiting on her home, was there indifferently received by her. 
And that I may come to the main point of my story, I in short tell you 
that she used such artifice in the manage of this affair, being withal 
assisted by her landlady, that he presented her several fair jewels, 
some whereof were of real worth, and others that appeared to be so 
but since proved to be otherwise, as her husband Carleton, to whose 
hands they afterwards came, doth affirm. 

This was the adventure of our soldado and our new dignified lady. 
She by this means did get a name which she always held, and which 
indeed was very fortunate to her, not only in her present transactions 
with her suitors but afterwards in her husband Carleton. But that 
I may quite finish this adventure and come to that, I will proceed. 

She was doubtful that it would not always be such fair weather, and 
therefore she was resolved to make hay while the sun did shine. She 
had many resplendent jewels that gave a great lustre, but she was will- 
ing to have more and some money to boot. Therefore, her suitor still 
continuing his courtship, and that importunately, and pressing to 
marriage, she knew then that all would come out, that she should be 
discovered, and that she, having always delayed it till her return to 
Cologne, and her lover intending to go thither with her, could no 
longer be deluded, and that then the true Maria van Wolway would 
be known ; wherefore she devised how to manage her affairs, and thus 
she accomplished them. 

She at length consented to go to Cologne, but first her lover was to 
go home and fetch such habit and other necessaries as were convenient 
for his intended match. His habitation was not far off, and he had 
made several trips thither, and never returned empty-handed but still 
brought some jewel or another such as his ancestors had left or he had 
otherwise come to by the fortune of the wars. And when she had 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 53 

them together, they were a very fair parcel. But now at his going 
home he promised to bring her more variety, but she resolved not to 
expect him in his return. But however he having a chain of gold and 
a medal which was given him for some remarkable good service in the 
war, and which he always wore next his shirt, she with small entreaties 
prevailed with him to leave that also behind him. He, knowing that 
if he had her, as he did not question, that then he should have all again, 
was very free with her; and so they parted. 

She, knowing that it was then full time to be gone, acquainted her 
landlady with her design, who had had a pretty share in the spoils of 
our captain. But our lady was resolved she should not carry it off; 
she would have it all herself and admit no sharers. In order whereunto 
she persuaded the landlady to get her a conveniency to be gone, not to 
the intended Cologne, but to another place, where she should not be 
suspected and therefore not followed by her lover. The landlady was 
willing to accomodate her, and therefore went out, leaving her at 
home; but she did not intend to stay there. For this ungrateful 
woman, so soon as her landlady was gone out, did break open a chest 
wherein she put all her treasure, and there she found not only what had 
been given her by the captain but also a considerable sum of money, all 
of which she took, and packing it up with her own parcel away she 
went. And having privately provided herself of a passage to Utrecht, 
there she made a stop for a while, thence passed to Amsterdam, where 
she sold the gold chain and some other jewels. From thence she 
passed to Rotterdam, and so coming to the Brill, took shipping for 
England. 

These were the adventures of our lady. And now, being possessed 
of so much wealth, she did beheve herself to be one. And she, having 
had such good success by this name of Maria van Wolway, she was 
resolved to continue it. She cared not for either her old lover or her 
landlady, nor how they would resent her departure. She believed she 
had done well in chousing the old fool of his jewels, and that she had 
done very well in so cheating her landlady who had assisted her.^ 

What Kirkman did in this instance is perfectly clear. He 
took Mary's lying account of the soldado (whose description 
he copied with verbal fidelity), converted it into a new 

^ Counterfeit Lady, pp. 15-25. 



54 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

imaginary story full of circumstantial detail, and ingeniously 
joined it to the Carleton episode. Here, then, we have 
caught him, as it were, red-handed, — unhesitatingly pur- 
loining incidents that he knew to be fictitious and modifying 
them as he pleased. The lie that Mary told to defend her- 
self, Kirkman embroidered to entertain his readers. 

Thus the proofs of fabrication that eluded us in examining 
the " Memories, " " Memoires," and " Appendix," are found 
in " The Counterfeit Lady." The invention of the soldado 
incident, the forging of links between episodes previously 
unconnected, and the attribution to personal informants of 
statements either invented or taken, often word for word, 
from books, — these evidences (which will be supported by 
others recurrently appearing in the further course of this 
study) irresistibly force us to recognize that " The Counter- 
feit Lady " is not to be regarded as a credulous or carelessly 
inaccurate work but as an intentionally fictitious one. 
Having ascertained this, we are prepared to trace the secret 
methods employed in its composition. 



CHAPTER V 

The Narrative Technique 
OF " The Counterfeit Lady " 

Kirkman's statement that he had gathered " all that hath 
been written of her," is true as to the more important writ- 
ings about Mary. He had before him " A Westminster 
Wedding," John Carleton's " Ultimum Vale," the " Life and 
Character " (comprising Mary's " Case " and the " Appen- 
dix "), and the " Memoires." ^ Having mastered these books, 
he strove to compose one which should surpass each of them 
in fuUness, coherence, and verisimilitude. 

To make his readers believe that he was a cautious his- 
torian, Kirkman often admits that he is uninformed or 
uncertain about some details of Mary's Hfe, He cannot 
explain what led this girl, with her head full of romances, to 
marry a humble shoemaker; " what ever she conceited I 
know not," he confesses, " but married she was to one 
Stedman, a gentleman of the gentle craft." She ran away 
from Stedman, " but whether it was to Barbadoes or what 
other place, I cannot learn." Then she married Day, but 
" what means she used to manage this affair I know not." 
Whether, on her fhght to the continent, " it was France or 
Holland where she first landed, I know not." Some of the 

' Counterfeit Lady, pp. 67-81. — Cf. ibid., pp. 15, 27, 74, 76, 93, 95, 107, with 
Ultimum Vale, pp. 11, 17, 20, 25, 28, 29, :is, 37, 38. — The link with which the 
author of the Life and Character joined the Appendix to the Case is followed verba- 
tim in The Counterfeit Lady, pp. 66-67. The Case is mentioned on pp. vi and 27, 
and both it and the Appendix are constantly borrowed from. — The Memoires are 
mentioned on p. 180, and followed from there to the end. — The Memories Kirk- 
man does not seem to have used. 

SS 



56 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

thefts she is accused of he doubts, and in one case he reports 
two accounts of a fraud without committing himself as to 
which of them is accurate. " As for her jewels," he says, 
" he [John Carleton] tells me they were counterfeit, but she 
alleges that they being offered in Cheapside to a goldsmith, 
he valued them at £1500; this I beheve a lie, and a loud one, 
neither do I believe they were of so little value as her husband 
Carleton reporteth." After he has told us some of her 
remarks to her lovers, he refuses to say more, " that I may 
not seem to romance by telling you all their private dis- 
courses." He does not know how long she remained in exile 
in Jamaica; and as for her supposed letters thence, " being 
known to be only a piece of romantic wit, I shall not recite 
it here, lest all the rest of my relation be suspected to be only 
my own invention; therefore, I shall pass that by and pro- 
ceed to matter of fact." ^ Most of his remarks of this sort 
appear in the early part of his book, and they appertain to 
comparatively unimportant points. When he is in the full 
swing of his story, he relies upon having gained the confidence 
of his readers by his air of judicial caution about trifling 
matters, and unhesitatingly narrates all the particulars about 
the chief incidents. 

So numerous are the details given by Kirkman that they 
expand " The Counterfeit Lady " to a noteworthy length. 
It contains about thirty-five thousand words, — ten thous- 
and more than Mrs. Behn's longest novel, " Oroonoko," and 
nearly twice as many as the " Memoires," previously the 
longest biography of Mary Carleton. Only in very rare 
instances is the additional space devoted to episodes that 
may be called entirely new. On one occasion, " The Coun- 
terfeit Lady " tells us, Mary stopped at a West Smithfield 

^ Counterfeit Lady, pp. ii, 12, 13, 14, 90, 95, 104-105, 180, 194. 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 57 

alehouse, alleging that she was a young heiress from the 
country. The hostess and her daughter believed her; but 
the host exclaimed: "Away, away, I cannot believe any 
man to be so mad as to leave a thousand pounds to your 
dispose; neither do I believe you to be such a person as you 
name yourself; if you were, you would not sit tippling here 
at this time of the night." Determined to be revenged on 
him, Mary visited the inn again, ordered her ale served not 
in a pewter mug but in a silver tankard, and that night — 
though the hostess, hearing a noise, " leaps out of her bed 
and with her clothes half on and half off went down " — 
Mary slipped away with the " ancient piece of plate worth 
about three pound." ^ The only hint of such an incident 
given in the "Appendix" is its vague statement: "She 
often changed her lodgings, visited taverns and alehouses, 
stealing silver tankards, bowls, and other drinking vessels 
in abundance." ^ 

What Kirkman does as a rule, however, is to expand those 
incidents that are definitely, though more succinctly, given 
by his predecessors. The episode of the defrauded apothe- 
cary, for example, contains in the " Appendix " only thirty- 
eight words, in the " Memories " over six hundred and fifty, 
in the " Memoires " about nine hundred and fifty, but in 
" The Counterfeit Lady " over seventeen hundred and fifty.^ 
In studying the character of such additions, we shall see that 
they were made for many different purposes, all of which 
were helpful to the historic development of the art of realistic 
fiction. 

^ Ibid., pp. 171-175. 

2 Appendix, p. 75. — Cf. Memories, p. 13, and Memoires, p. 52. 

' This does not include the 200 words given to his second version of the episode. 
— Appendix, p. 75; Memories (which is not usually so detailed), p. 13; Memoires, 
p. 76; Counterfeit Lady, p. 183. 



58 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

Of these purposes, the most obvious was to make fully- 
clear what in the preceding accounts had been vague. The 
" Appendix " says: 

She cheated two weavers in Spitalfields, and a laceman, of goods to 
the value of eighty pounds, by dancing them up and down the town 
from place to place till by some wile and stratagem she could find 
means to drop them and carry off the goods she had brought from their 
houses.^ 

According to " The Counterfeit Lady," Mary, after selecting 
the goods told the weaver that she had brought no money 
with her, and requested him to accompany her home. After 
some protests, he was persuaded to step into her coach. She 
then asked him where she could buy gold and silver lace, and 
he directed her to a friend of his, from whom she bought 
twenty pounds' worth. " The laceman seeing his friend the 
weaver there, not doubting anything, did not think it neces- 
sary to go himself, but sent his man." On their arrival at 
her lodgings, she served them wine, tossed a bag apparently 
containing over fifty pounds on the table, and asked them to 
write out itemized bills for the purchase, — " half of it being 
for a niece of mine who is above in her chamber." " They 
began to write; her bag of money and hand on it was still on 
the table." Turning to her maid, she told her to take the 
things upstairs and show them to her niece. When " one of 
the two [tradesmen] had now made out his bill, and the other 
begins to do so, she takes it in her hand as to peruse it, walks 
three or four steps towards a curtain, and turns in there." 
That was the last they saw of her, the goods, and the money; 
for she had escaped by a rear door, leaving the weaver and 
the laceman angrily blaming one another for the loss.^ 

' Appendix, p. 74. ^ Counterfeit Lady, pp. 145-149. 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 59 

Another escapade, in which Mary was again passing as a 
country gentlewoman, is thus described in the " Appendix ": 

She had a thousand pounds to her portion, left by an uncle, and 
which she would demand upon her marriage. One Mr. Woodson, a 
young gentleman of Islington, who had an estate of two hundred 
pounds per annum, and five hundred pounds in ready money, saw her, 
and soon became enamoured, and professed a most violent regard for 
her; but she, pretending to be mighty unwilling to marry without her 
father's consent, and showing him twenty forged letters as from ad- 
. mirers in the country, and by one trick or another, at last found means 
to rob him of about three hundred pounds.^ 

This slight account becomes in " The Counterfeit Lady " 
copious and vivid. Here Mary is said to have pretended 
that her father wanted her to marry somebody she disliked, 
whereupon she fled to the city and lived on the interest of 
" the thousand pounds, quarterly paid her." To make 
people believe this, she forged letters from a supposed kins- 
woman of hers, and left them lying in her room, where her 
landlady surreptitiously read them, A well-to-do young 
man, who was related to the landlady and used to visit her, 
sought to court Mary; but she was very shy, and only " out 
of complacency to her landlady " suffered herself "to be 
treated by this young gallant," and reluctantly accepted the 
present of a watch. " Now being free in their converse, she 
told him all the sad story of her father's harshness in seeking 
to force her to such a match as she hated; her suitor pitied 
her in that, and made a free tender of his love and service." 
Despite his good income, she pretended to be unwilling to 
marry without her father's consent, " for by that means she 
would lose a thousand pounds more." 

" As they were one day discoursing of these and such like 
affairs, a porter knocks and brings a letter. The maid 

1 Appendix, pp. 73-74- 



6o MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

receives it and brings it to her mistress, who presently opens 
and reads it; but she had no sooner finished her reading but 
she, pretending to be amazed and affrighted, cried out: 
' I am undone! ' and was so ready to fall into a swound that 
her servant was forced to apply things to recover her." Her 
lover comforted her, and she showed him the letter (given in 
full by Kirkman), in which a " loving and affectionate kins- 
woman, R. F." informed her that by the recent death of her 
brother she was now the sole heir, but he, " who used to 
dissuade your father from violence," being dead, her father 
was determined she should marry her rejected lover, and to 
force her to do so was coming to London with him in a few 
days. It being therefore necessary for Mary to flee from her 
known lodgings, her lover offered her the shelter of his rooms, 
'' gave her the accommodation of the fairest room of the two, 
which was to the street side," moved his trunk to the back 
room, and put his man in the garret. " This was that which 
she aimed at." One evening, complaining of a headache 
and the noises in the street, she was moved into the back 
room, " only changing the sheets." Towards morning she 
and her maid broke the trunk open. " They searched for 
gold which they knew he had, but that being portable he 
carried in his pocket, and so they missed of it," but they 
" found a hundred pounds in a bag and some suits of clothes," 
and therewith slipped away.^ 

Such additions, it will have been observed, give not only 
clearness to the narrative but also plausibility. Too often 
the original sources ignored matters that seemed to require 
explanation. The care with which Kirkman forestalled 
possible doubts, may be seen by comparing these parallel 
passages : 

^ Counterfeit Lady, pp. 1 19-129. 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 



6i 



Appendix, p. 74 

She told her landlady that a 
country gentleman of her ac- 
quaintance, happening to fall sick 
in a pitiful alehouse in London, 
died; and that some friends of 
his and hers together had thought 
it convenient to remove the corpse 
to a house of more credit, in order 
to a handsome burial. 



The landlady readily granted 
the use of her best chamber, 
whither the corpse was brought, 
and a topping undertaker in 
Leadenhall Street laid hold of the 
job, who, having received an un- 
limited commission to perform 
the funeral, resolved that nothing 
should be wanting to make the 
bill as complete as possible. 



Accordingly he provides a good 
quantity of old plate for an orna- 
ment to the room where the body 



Counterfeit Lady, pp. 130-132 

She told her landlady that a 
country gentleman of her ac- 
quaintance, being unacquainted 
in the city, had happened into a 
pitiful alehouse, where, falling 
sick, he soon died; and that some 
friends of his and she together 
had thought it very inconvenient 
to bury him from thence, and not 
knowing any place so fit, they de- 
sired to bring his dead body to 
her lodging to bury him from 
thence. Therefore she desired 
her leave and assistance in ac- 
commodating her with necessa- 
ries, and she should have a piece 
for the trouble of her house. 
The landlady, hearing of profit, 
soon consented; and that even- 
ing the corpse in a very handsome 
coffin was brought in a coach and 
placed in the chamber, which was 
the room one pair of stairs next 
the street, and had a balcony. 

The coffin being covered only 
with an ordinary black cloth, our 
Counterfeit seems much to dis- 
Hke it. The landlady tells her 
that for twenty shillings she 
might have the use of a pall of 
velvet, and for as much more 
some scutcheons of the gentle- 
man's arms. Our lady was well 
pleased with the pall, but for the 
scutcheons she said they would 
be useless in regard the deceased 
gentleman was unknown. 

The landlady provides a good 
quantity of old plate for an orna- 
ment to the room where the body 



62 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 



lay, viz. two silver candlesticks, 
a silver flagon, two standing gilt 
bowls, and several other pieces of 
plate, — this was for an adorn- 
ment and to be used in serving 
the wine the next day. But the 
night before the intended burial 
our Counterfeit Lady and her 
maid within the house handed 
out to their comrades without, 
all the plate, the pall of velvet, 
and all the other furniture of the 
chamber. . . . 

The coffin . , . was filled with 
brickbats and hay, such a quan- 
tity as might make it weighty 
enough for a dead body. 



The earlier writings often lack interest because in them 
Mary seems to accomplish her designs too easily. Kirkman 
imagines such difficulties, great or small, as would naturally 
have arisen before her. The '' Appendix," for example, 
simply states as a matter of fact that Mary had a maid as 
ingenious as herself; but " The Counterfeit Lady " shows 
how she managed to obtain her. The following passages 
illustrate the difference in this particular between the cruder 
method and the more advanced: 



lay, viz. two large silver candle- 
sticks, a silver flagon, two stand- 
ing silver bowls, and several other 
pieces of plate. 

But the 
night before the intended burial, 
Madam and her maid handed out 
to their comrades all the man's 
plate, together with the velvet 
pall. . . . 



The coffin . . . was filled with 
nothing but brickbats. 



Appendix, p. 73 

She passed in her new lodgings 
for a virgin newly come out of the 
country upon some extraordinary 
occasions. 



Counterfeit Lady, pp. 118-119 

First when she took her lodg- 
ing, pretending she was a virgin 
and newly come out of the coun- 
try upon some extraordinary oc- 
casion she wanted a maid to wait 
on her. She therefore desires her 
landlady to help her to one. She 
soon furnished her, but not to her 
content; and several she had be- 
fore she was pleased. They had 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 63 

one fault or other, and she found 
they would not be for her purpose. 
She was provided of a maid- But in conclusion one she had 
servant, as cunning and as subtle that very well pleased her, and 
a baggage as herself, and who was indeed was as cunning and subtle 
afterwards very assisting to her a baggage as herself, and was 
in all her affairs. afterwards very assistant to her 

in all her affairs. 

None of her victims are as easy prey in " The Counterfeit 
Lady " as in the earlier versions. The young apothecary 
whom she inveigled is shown at first disinchned to matri- 
mony, and has to be persuaded by an accomplice to court 
her.^ When she asks the weaver to carry his goods to her 
rooms, he says : " I shall not let my goods go out of the house 
before I have my money," adding that a man, on being 
granted a similar request, had robbed him. " She seems to 
wonder at the contrivance, and exclaims against the cunning 
subtle wickedness of the world." Not until she has urged 
that, as she is a woman, he need not fear her, does he consent 
to go.^ Owing to the systematic addition of such touches, 
there is in " The Counterfeit Lady " a much UveHer conflict 
and greater suspense. 

The action, considered as a whole, moves more smoothly 
from episode to episode than in the earlier narratives. The 
links by which Kirkman gave coherence to the story, we have 
already considered as among the proofs of its fictitious 
character; and they are of equal importance as signs of his 
method of composition. Such connections he does not make 
in every instance, but they appear in more than sufficient 
number to show that he was conscious of their value. He 
joined, for example, the imaginary incident of the soldado to 
the Carleton affair, by declaring that the former taught 
Mary to impose upon John as " Maria van Wolway." ^ 

^ Counterfeit Lady, p. 183. ^ Ibid., p. 145. ^ Ibid., pp. 21-22 and 26. 



64 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

Unlike the author of the " Appendix," he did not carry her 
cursorily from her robbery of wealthy lovers to the meaner 
fraud of the feigned funeral, but explained that she had in the 
interim fallen into low company " so that money flew away 
apace." ^ To lead up to the next incident, he said that she 
had the funeral pall of velvet made into a coat, and " seeing 
that her stolen French coat became her so well, purposed to 
have a new gown of the same price," which led her to cheat 
a silk merchant out of the necessary materials.^ 

This fraud he connected with the next one in a more 
elaborate manner. " She bragged," he says, " of her fair 
undertaking to her comrades," one of whom, a man, ven- 
tured to surpass her ingenuity by getting silk " from the 
weaver himself that makes it." When he had succeeded in 
doing so, " she told him that she should never be at quiet 
until she had acted somewhat that should be equal to it, and, 
considering of what, she told him that she would put the 
cheat upon the very same man, the honest weaver." ^ In 
the " Appendix," the thefts from the weaver and the lace- 
man are followed, without any hint of a connection, by her 
robbery of a mantuamaker. In "The Counterfeit Lady," 
it is the possession of the silks and laces which suggests to her 
the expediency of taking lodgings in a house where, besides 
robbing it, she may without cost to herself get the stolen 
goods made into a gown.^ Later it is because she has wearied 
of her " splendid gallant garb " that she defrauds a shop- 
keeper of mourning garments.^ Thereupon, because thus 
" habited in sable a la mode, [she] became the talk of those 
that saw her," — among whom was a " young gentleman in 

^ Ibid., p. 130. — Cf. Appendix, p. 74. 
2 Ibid., p. 133. — Cf. Appendix, p. 74. 
' Ibid., p. 137-143. — Cf. Appendix, p. 74. 
* Ibid., p. 154. — Cf. Appendix, p. 75. 
^ Ibid., p. 158. — Cf. Appendix, p. 75. 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 65 

mourning too," the victim of her next exploit/ The epi- 
sodes, most of which are thus woven together, have in them- 
selves, as we have seen, been made much more clear, plausible 
and lively. Surely the art of realistic fiction, which is sup- 
posed to have been neglected at this time, shows in " The 
Counterfeit Lady " remarkable signs of development so far 
as the conduct of plot or action is concerned. 

The same thing is true regarding the characterization. 
Just as Kirkman, to enhance the plausibility of the story, 
adds many details to the action; so, for the same purpose, he 
inserts comments which illuminate the motives of the per- 
sonages. He does so even in the case of minor characters, 
as may have been observed in several episodes previously 
described. In the soldado episode, the landlady is willing to 
assist Mary " because she expected some profit in the visits 
which she expected he would make there "; and when Mary 
agrees to marry the soldado, he is willing to entrust his 
treasures to her " knowing that if he had her, as he did not 
question, he should have all again." ^ The laceman is willing 
to send his man with the goods, because his friend the weaver 
is to go also.^ The lawyer whose curiosity was aroused by 
the fair stranger in her " sable a la mode," would probably 
not have fallen into her toils, for he was courting a young 
lady; but when Mary pretended to need his professional 
advice, his expectation of legal fees led him to cultivate her 
acquaintance.^ 

An incident which appears in all the versions is that of the 
apothecary whom Mary, with the help of an old bawd, 
tricked into marrying her. Though it is told at considerable 

' Ibid., pp. 160-161. — Cf. Appendix, p. 75. 

2 Ibid., pp. 20-21 and 23. — Cf. p. 131, " The landlady, hearing of profit, soon 
consented." 
' Ibid., p. 147. 
* Ibid., p. 162. 



66 - MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

length in the " Memoires " (whence Kirkman took it), the 
characterization remains comparatively slight and unnatural. 
In " The Counterfeit Lady " the old woman, — openly 
greedy in the original, — when urging the apothecary to 
marry Mary cleverly pretends that she has no financial 
interest in the affair. " I will have no hand in the match," 
she says, " unless you can love one another." The apothe- 
cary, — who in the original is simply represented as pros- 
perous, — is disinclined to marry, as he thinks " trading 
dead, and housekeeping chargeable." Later, when he has 
begun to swallow the bait but is still careful of his money, 
Mary accuses him of being as stingy as the detested uncle 
who is her supposed guardian. " I doubt," she complains, 
*' I shall be still in the same condition and be kept bare of 
money." It is because the apothecary's vanity is thus 
touched, — and not, as formerly, out of incredible folly, — 
that he makes her a large gift of money. Here, as usual, 
Kirkman adds good touches of motivation and characteriza- 
tion to minor personages who, even in the more elaborate of 
the earlier versions, seemed unreal.^ 

Mary herself, Kirkman describes and characterizes with a 
thoroughness approached by none of his predecessors. 
Referring in his preface to her portrait, drawn in 1663, which 
made the frontispiece of his book, he says : 

You will conclude it very like, only she was somewhat thinner 
faced; nine years had made that alteration. And you will find that 
the dressing of her head is different from the present fashion, and from 
what she now wore, which was a la mode, — a large parcel of frizzled 
hair, which is called a tower. And her habit now at her trial was an 
Indian striped gown, silk petticoat, white shoes with slaps, laced with 
green; and in these she was hanged and, I think, buried. This was 
her outside; what her inside was, by reading this book you will be 
siifficiently acquainted. 

1 Ibid., pp. 183-194. — Cf. Memoires, pp. 76-83. 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 67 

Her appearance as a condemned prisoner he describes as 
follows : 

She was heard to sigh very often, and cry out: ' Oh that I had my 
days to live over again ! ' . . . I am sure she was much dejected and 
very humble when I was with her. . . . She was as clouded in her 
spirit as she was in her face, for her hood was still over it down to her 
mouth, and she very rarely turned it up ; and her speech was very low 
and faint, broken and interrupted with deep and often sighing.^ 

Besides giving such outward descriptions of Mary, Kirk- 
man especially devoted himself to the more difficult task of 
revealing her feelings, thoughts, and motives. The pre- 
viously mentioned passages which he uses to join uncon- 
nected episodes, serve at the same time to display the 
workings of Mary's mind.^ He shows that it was her youth- 
ful love of pleasure, and her reading of romances, that made 
her discontented with a humble station and moved her to 
seek adventures.^ After telling us how she cheated the 
soldado and the landlady, he does not forget to say what she 
herself thought of that exploit."* He describes her scornful 
pride when, following the Carleton affair, people suggested 
that she keep a coffee house: " she was mighty angry at it, 
and said it was a flam given out to sully her name and 
reputation." ^ The poor remnants of modesty vaguely 
granted her by previous writers, he defines in precise words : 
if she consorted with lovers, he says, " it was not with any 
that brought their half crown, crown, or half a piece, it must 
be greater kindnesses than these, and some considerable 
acquaintance and knowledge of the party. ... I know 
several idle fellows that would pretend to be very inward 

* Ibid., pp. vii, 2IO, 213. — These descriptions Kirkman may have drawn from 
life, as he probably had seen Mary at her last trial, in prison (cf. p. 208), or at her 
execution. 

2 Supra, pp. 63-65. * Ibid., p. 9 flf. * Ibid., p. 25. 

^ Ibid., p. 100. — Cf. Appendix, p. 72. 



68 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

with the German Princess, . . . but she knew how to 
frustrate their expectations, so that this crime she was not so 
guilty of as the world supposes." ^ Such additions, taken one 
by one, may seem slight; but they are made so constantly 
that their cumulative effect is remarkably strong. 

KLirkman even has a rudimentary conception of what, 
speaking of modern novels, we caU character development. 
To his predecessors Mary was a fixed character from birth 
to death, but Kirkman exhibits her in progressive phases. 
When she meets the soldado, she is an adventurous rather 
than a wholly depraved person. Thereafter for a time she 
cheats as a rule only those who were trying, like the Carle- 
tons, to gain some advantage from her. Not until she has 
eluded the advances of several gallants does she become a 
kept mistress.^ Finally she reaches the lowest point of her 
moral decline when she descends to the company of criminals 
and to petty thefts from innocent victims. Whether or not 
Kirkman was building better than he knew, it is certain that 
in his story for the first time we clearly see the character of 
Mary developing from that of a romance-reading girl, through 
that of a sorely tempted and partly deluded woman, into 
that of a deliberate and habitual criminal. 

The principal changes made by Kirkman in the action 
and characterization, we have now considered one by one. 
Their combined effect may be studied in the following 
passages : 

^ Ibid., pp. 107-108. — Cf. Appendix, p. 72. 

2 Ibid., pp. 102-110. — This part of her career is very largely, if not wholly, 
invented by Kirkman. 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 



69 



Appendix, pp. 72-73 



One Mr. Chamberlaine of 
Southampton Street, a gentleman 
of about fifty-five years of age, 
found means to win her, but he 
paid dear for his lechery. This 
person was so deep in love with 
her that notwithstanding 



he knew all her tricks 

and the story of her 
foreign birth to be romantic, 



he cohabi- 
ted with her for some weeks. 

The day after he had first lain 
with her, he presented her with 
a jewel of fifty pound value, and 



Counterfeit Lady, pp. 109-118 

She was not easy to be courted 
to incontinence, and they who did 
win her to it paid full dear for 
their lechery. ... A gentleman 
of about fifty years of age lodged 
in the same house with her, and 
was so deeply in love with her 
that he would willingly have been 
at the charge of a constant main- 
tenance if she would have lived 
with him. Only he not only dis- 
trusted but knew all her tricks, 
and told her of them, and that he 
did believe the story of her 
foreign birth was romantic. But 
however, if she would answer his 
love and live soberly with him, 
he would maintain her in as 
splendid a garb as she would de- 
sire, for he had four hundred 
pounds per annum and no charge 
but himself and a man-servant. 
This was his discourse to her, to 
which she gave him various an- 
swers; but at last, presenting her 
with some rings and such toys, 
he won her to consent. 

Now in regard this their pur- 
pose could not be handsomely ex- 
ecuted in the house where they 
were, and they designing to live 
in all freedom as man and wife, 
they therefore left that lodging 
and went to another at a conve- 
nient distance, where he cohabi- 
ted with her for some weeks. 

He had promised her a jewel 
worth fifty pound, which he 
would give her the first night she 



7° 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 



decked her in the most rich ap- 
parel, not altogether perhaps in 
respect to her person but for his 
own wanton humor. 

Yet he 
like an old fox, knowing that he 
had a serpent in his bosom, would 
not trust her with any money, nor 
himself neither; for all the time 
they lived together he did not 
keep above ten pounds in the 
house at a time. He had an 
annuity of four hundred pounds, 
and as he received his quar- 
terly or half-yearly payments, he 
carried the money to a gold- 
smith's, and fetched it as he had 
occasion. And the goldsmith's 
bill he was very cautious of, not 
leaving it in any box, chest, or 
trunk, that might be broke open, 
but still carrying it about with 
him in his pocket. 

She minded all this well enough, 
and was for some time contented 
to live in that private retired 
manner, 



would lie with him, as an engage- 
ment of his truth to her, and he 
performed his word accordingly. 
Sometime they lived thus to- 
gether and complied with one 
another very reciprocally, yet he 
like an old fox, knowing that he 
had a serpent in his bosom, would 
not trust her with any money, nor 
himself neither; for all the time 
they lived together he did not 
keep above ten pounds in the 
house at a time. 

But still as he received his quar- 
terly or half-yearly payments, he 
carried the money to a gold- 
smith's, and fetched it as he had 
occasion. And the goldsmith's 
bill he was very curious of, not 
leaving it in any box, chest, or 
trunk, that might be broken open, 
but still carrying it about with 
him in his pocket. 

She minded all this well enough , 
and was for some time contented 
to live in that private retired 
manner. But like fire that is 
kept close will blaze when it can 
get out, so she could not endure 
to live long without being in 
action. She had a mind to blaze 
abroad in the world a little; her 
inclination, or rather fate, forced 
her, and act she must. Where- 
fore she waited her opportunity 
when she might get some prize, 
and so march off with flying 
colors. She waited the coming 
of the next quarter-day when his 
rents were to come up, which 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 



71 



till he coming 
home one night so drunk that she 
was forced to put him to bed, 
where when he was laid, and she 
found by his snoring that he was 
fast asleep, she examined his 
pockets, and looking into his let- 
ter-case among his papers, she 
there found a bill upon a gold- 
smith in Lombard Street for one 
hundred pounds. 

This she secures, and puts all 
up again; and although her bed- 
fellow sleeps hard, yet she takes 
little rest. 



Where- 
fore early in the morning, before 



were brought accordingly but se- 
cured as I have already told you. 
She knew not how to engage him 
to bring it home, lest he should 
distrust her; and if it lay long 
there he would fetch it away in 
parcels, wherefore she knew not 
what course to take. 

But fortune put an opportu- 
nity into her hands by his coming 
home one night so drunk that she 
was forced to put him to bed, 
where when he was laid, and she 
found by his snorting that he was 
fast enough, she examined his 
pockets, and looking into his let- 
ter-case among his papers, she 
there found a bill upon a gold- 
smith in Lombard Street for one 
hundred pounds. 

This she secures, and puts all 
up again; and although her bed- 
fellow sleeps hard, yet she takes 
Httle rest for thinking how she 
should finish her design. For she 
doubted that the next day upon 
examining his papers, which he 
often turned over, he would miss 
the bill and presently go to the 
goldsmith's and prevent her re- 
ceiving it. Wherefore she con- 
cluded it absolutely necessary to 
hinder from that, by getting him 
out of the town; but how to do 
that she did not presently know. 

But at length considering that 
he had a very loving friend that 
lived about eight mile off, she 
resolved to send her bed-fellow 
of some errand thither. Where- 
fore early in the morning before 



72 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 



he was willing to awake, she 
called on him, telling him that 
his friend, Mr. Horton of Brent- 
ford, had been there, and must 
needs speak with him that day. 
This Horton having a great many 
effects of the old gentleman's in 
his hands, wherefore he judging 
something more than ordinary, 
made all possible speed to Brent- 
ford. 



he was willing to awake, she 
called on him, telling him Mr. 
such a one, his friend, had been 
there, and must needs speak with 
with him that day. 

" Now," said she, " I thought 
fit to call you thus early, that 
you may have time enough to go 
and return again before night; 
for you know that I cannot be 
content without your company." 

He, hearing her discourse, and 
not having any occasion to hin- 
der him, soon rises, and taking 
leave of her begins his journey. 
No sooner was he gone, but she 
makes ready for hers; and, being 
dressed, she takes coach for the 
goldsmith's. When she was al- 
most come thither, she drew out 
the bill to look on it. And it was 
well she did so, or else all her 
project would have been spoiled, 
for she intended to demand a just 
hundred pound, when, looking on 
the backside of the bill, she found 
that twenty pound of the hundred 
had been received. This startled 
her, and troubled her to think 
that she was twenty pound worse 
than she thought for. But she 
was glad she saw it before she 
came to the goldsmith's, who 
might else have distrusted her, 
had she asked him for the full 
hundred pound. 

She, being now come to the 
goldsmith's shop, told him that 
she came from such a gentleman, 
who had such a day left a hun- 
dred pound, but had received 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 



73 



The coast being now clear, she 
was resolved to march oflf and 
leave her old friend. 



She breaks open the locks of a 
trunk and box, and rifles them 
both, where she finds twenty 
pieces of old gold, a golden seal, 
an old watch, and some odd pieces 
of plate. These, together with 
the rings, pendents, and neck- 
laces, the old gentleman had pre- 
sented her with, made a tolerable 
booty. And now she trips off to a 
new lodging towards West Smith- 
field, and there lies close. 



twenty pound; and he, being 
sick had sent her for the eighty 
remaining. There was no dis- 
trust, nor no cause for it, where- 
fore the money was paid and the 
bill delivered up. 

She, being now the mistress of 
this rich cargo of eighty pound 
in money, the jewel of fifty pound 
which he had given her, and 
several other rings, pendants, and 
necklaces to a good value, was 
resolved to march off, leave her 
old friend, and seek a new, or at 
leastwise new quarters. But she 
was much disturbed and vexed 
that she was disappointed twenty 
pound in her expectation, and 
thought how she might make that 
good. And being now resolved 
to leave her old lover, and there- 
fore to make the most of him, and 
knowing that she had time enough 
by reason of his being out of town, 
she therefore returned to her 
lodging, and, not having the keys, 
breaks open the locks of a 
trunk and box, and rifles them 
both, where she finds twenty 
pieces of old gold, a golden seal, 
an old watch, and some odd pieces 
of plate. These, and all things 
of any worth, she takes. And 
then, without taking any leave 
of her landlady, she again takes 
coach, and marches off to a new 
lodging at another end of the 
town, where for some days she 
keeps close. 



74 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

Having thus filled out the outlines of action and character- 
ization found in the " Appendix " (in which this episode, by 
the way, is developed exceptionally weU), Kirkman added 
the following typical conclusion : 

And now I have related this story of her, is she not a bad ungrateful 
woman thus to leave a man who so handsomely provided for her ? 
Had it not been better for her to have continued with him, who loved, 
tendered, and would always have taken care of her, and kept her from 
running into those lewd courses that she since then committed ? Was 
it not enough for her to take the gentleman's bill, and all his money, 
but also afterwards to go back and take his gold, which he valued at 
may be more than the worth, but above all things his seal of arms, 
which it may be had descended to him from his ancestors, and which 
he would not have parted from for forty times the price ? This, she 
must needs think, must much discontent him, considering the trouble 
and necessity she would put him to till next quarter-day, until when he 
must stay without money or be forced to borrow. All these things 
she knew, but no consideration weighed with her at anything; all was 
laid aside to perform her will and to be, as she reckoned, revenged for 
the twenty pounds she was disappointed of. Well, let her go for a base 
lewd woman ! But time will come that she must repent this unhand- 
some ingrateful action. And thus you see how dearly this man paid 
for her wanton company. If he had any music, he paid the fiddler 
soundly, or she paid herself; his sweet meat cost him sour sauce, and 
so will hers in the end. 

But she had much more work cut out for her to do. This was but 
one of her first projects, and was not likely to make much noise; for 
the gentleman for shame would not speak much of it in public, only to 
some private friends, — and from one of them I had it. If he had 
made it public, it would have availed him little; he should only have 
been laughed at, and therefore silence was best in the case. 

Such comments upon Mary's conduct are characteristic 
of " The Counterfeit Lady," and exempHfy the last of the 
important differences between it and the earlier writings. 
With the exception of the sensational " Great Trial " in 1663, 
and the religious " Deportment before and at her Execu- 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 75 

tion" in 1673, these either were (Hke the "Appendix") so 
matter of fact in style as to be colorless, or were grossly- 
satiric. The derisive note was dominant in " The Man in 
the Moon," in " A Westminster Wedding," in " A Witty 
Combat," in " Some Luck, Some Wit," in " An Elegy," in 
the " Memories," and in the most ambitious work of them 
all, the " Memoires." The. latter, for example, says of 
Mary, " she refreshed her princely carcass," and " the costly 
drench is prepared for the brute." It delights in ironic 
remarks like " Lord bless me, what an age do we live in that 
innocence should be so foully accused! " It describes John 
Carleton as a " poor pigmy in a whining tone (like a howling 
Irishman) with a trembling gesture and a pale countenance "; 
and calls the go-between in the apothecary incident " an old 
superannuated beldam in this embassy between the Turk 
and the devil." It concludes after this fashion: 

Now the play is done, we '11 make an end too, in the same humor as 
we began. Only we are first bound in civility to draw the curtain, bid 
her good-night, and so leave her to her repose, closing all with her sad 
epicedium in the mournful accent of the poet 

Per varios casus, per tot discrimina rerum 

Tenditur in fur cam. . . . 

Thus we have attended her from her cradle to her coffin, discovered 
and diverted ourselves with the adventures of her life and the cir- 
cumstances at her death. . . . 'Tis pity a person of her titular 
dignity and quality should be deprived of so modish an ornament, viz., 
an epitaph, which may forewarn all passengers from trampling upon or 
rudely disturbing the ashes of a deceased princess.^ 

The tone of these accounts was, in fact, similar to that of the 
cynical picaresque novels of the time; and the more they 
affected literary quality, the more they indulged in ridicule 
of Mary and her victims. In view of this tendency, one 

* Memoires, pp. 10, 21, 2)3t 73, 76, 1 18-120. 



76 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

should expect '' The Counterfeit Lady " to be predominantly 
satiric in style. 

The contrary is, however, the case. In a few passages, to 
be sure, Kirkman, closely following his sources, writes in their 
biting manner; ^ but as a rule he omits or softens their abusive 
descriptions,^ and maintains the serious attitude of a stern 
moralist. These are the words in which he condemns Mary's 
false account of her origin : 

It is to be doubted that she who denied her earthly parents, and 
particularly her father, in her words, and in her actions denied or 
practiced against the laws of God, — her heavenly father, if he was 
not the more merciful to her, might have disowned her and denied her 
a place in his heavenly kingdom.^ 

The author of the " Memoires " said he wished us to " divert 
ourselves," but '' to the end that we may see her vices and 
thereby amend our own wicked lives, is the intent of your 
friend, F. K." * Accordingly he begins her story as follows: 

Let nature be never so liberal to us in the complete forming of our 
bodies after the most exact copies of perfection, and let us be never so 
well accomplished in all our outward qualities, so that we may imagine 
ourselves to be complete; yet if grace be not implanted in our hearts, 
whereby to guide us in our actions, we are like a fair vessel at sea which 
is sufficiently furnished with all her sails and tackling but yet wants the 
only thing to guide and steer her by, her rudder, without which it is very 
difficult to guide her to any safe harbor. The truth whereof we may 
every day experiment in ourselves, and we need look no further than 
into our own actions when we are only led by our natural inclinations. 
But in regard we either cannot or will not so soon see mistakes and 
crimes in ourselves as in others, therefore we have plentiful examples. 
And of all that this age have produced, none does so clearly demon- 
strate the truth of our frailness and imbecility, when governed by our 
wild desires, than this ensuing narrative. 

' E. g., in connecting his quotations from A Westminster Wedding. See Coun- 
terfeit Lady, p. 67 ff. 

^ E. g., in the apothecary incident; ibid., p. 183 ff. 
3 Ibid., p. 8. * Ibid., p. vii. 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 77 

He concludes in the same strain: 

Thus have I brought this unlucky woman from her birth to her 
burial. As she was born obscurely and lived viciously, so she died 
ignominiously. Such crimes as she was guilty of, deserve such end 
and punishment as was inflicted on her; and without repentance and 
amendment infallibly find them here, and worse hereafter. The only 
way, therefore, for Christians to avoid the one and contemn the other, 
is with sanctified hearts and unpolluted hands still to pray to God for 
his grace, continually to affect prayer and incessantly to practice piety 
in our thoughts, and godliness in our resolutions and actions; the which 
if we be careful and conscionable to perform, God will then shroud us 
under the wings of his favor, and so preserve and protect us ^\dth his 
mercy and providence as we shall have no cause to fear either hell or 
Satan . But if we give ourselves over to ill company, or our own wicked 
inclinations, we are infallibly led to the practice of those crimes which, 
although they may be pleasing at the present, yet they have a sting 
behind. And we shall be sensible thereof when we shall be hurried to 
an untimely end, as you have seen in the vicious life and untimely 
death of this our Counterfeit Lady. 

The weaknesses and Hmitations of " The Counterfeit Lady " 
are obvious. Its diction is faulty, its style slipshod, and its 
construction without subtle refinements. Measured by the 
standard of a good modern novel, it is a crude performance. 
Those elementary principles of good narration which to-day 
a mere tyro, taught by great examples, may practice with 
facility, Kirkman applied with conscious and painful effort. 
He was doing no conventional thing, yet he succeeded 
surprisingly well in making both the action and the character- 
ization in his story clear, lively, and so plausible as to compel 
beUef. " The Counterfeit Lady," ethically an indefensible 
fabrication, is to the historian of literature, considering that 
it was pubhshed in 1673, an admirable work; for it treats a 
story of common life in a serious tone, and makes the 
imaginary seem real. 



CHAPTER VI 

The Historical Significance 
OF " The Counterfeit Lady " 

The facts disclosed by our study of the Mary Carleton narra- 
tives contradict, if they do not wholly destroy, three cardinal 
doctrines about the origin of the modern novel, — (i) that 
the criminal biographies were as a class substantially true, 
(2) that the narrative methods of Defoe were acquired by 
*' imitating truthful records," and (3) that in seventeenth 
century fictitious literature there were no very close ap- 
proaches to the work of " the father of the English novel." 

Against the supposed rule that the criminal biographies 
werA true, militates the fact that " The Counterfeit Lady," 
tlie first seventeenth century criminal biography to be sub- 
jected to critical scrutiny, proves fictitious. Such being the 
case, it is no longer permissible to assume that such works 
differ from novels as a history of Queen Elizabeth differs 
from " Kenilworth," or as fact from fiction. 

The question naturally arises: was "The Counterfeit 
Lady " an exceptional performance, or was the practice of 
fabrication extensive ? In the present state of knowledge, 
we cannot give a positive answer, but we may adduce a 
number of circumstances which will permit a reasonable 
surmise and perhaps point the way to future research. To 
begin with, we have the ascertained fact that the authors of 
" The Man in the Moon," " A Westminster Wedding," and 
the " Great Trial " were, in a brief and awkward way, 
romancing. We know that the hired pedantic writer who 
assisted Mary in preparing her " Case " was embroidering 

78 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 79 

lies. We have seen grounds for suspecting, though not for 
proving, that the authors of the " Memories," " Memoires " 
and " Appendix " were supplying from their imaginations 
the incidents which were needed to fill out Mary's biogra- 
phies. In sum, counting Kirkman, there are five writers 
whom we know to be fabricators and three more whom we 
suspect. Is it not an untenable theory that all the fabrica- 
tors of this period should write on the Ufe of Mary Carleton 
and on nothing else ? Surely the more reasonable tentative 
assumption is that the writers with whom we have been 
dealing belonged to a larger group of unknown journalists 
who practiced the art of plausible lying, and to whom fabri- 
cation was a trade secret. 

In the field of journaHsm, in that of literature, and in the 
twilight zone between them, we find from the days of Eliza- 
beth to those of the Georges the flourishing of imposture. 
To mention aU its manifestations is impossible, but some 
typical instances will sufficiently illustrate the variety of the 
numerous deceptions. The trick of attributing invented 
stories to foreign wTiters was practiced by Gascoigne and 
Whetstone.^ In the partly autobiographic pamphlets of 
and about Robert Greene, there is a confused and hitherto 
not disentangled mixture of truth and falsehood.^ Among 
the many fictitious stories of the period that pretend to be 
true, are several in Thomas Heywood's " Gunaikeion," 
probably including the source of the well known " English 
Traveller," which, according to its author was " a modern 
history lately happening and in mine own knowledge." ^ 

1 Gascoigne, " Ferdinando Jeronimi"; Whetstone, " Rinaldo and Giletta." — 
Cf. H. S. Canby, The Short Story in English (1909), p. 127. 

2 E. g., The Mourning Garment, Greene's Never Too Late, his cony-catching 
pamphlets, A Groatsworth of Wit, and the Repentance. — Cf . Dictionary of Na- 
tional Biography, viii (1908), pp. 512-515. 

^ R. G. Martin, A Study of the Technical Development of Thomas Heywood 
(unpublished Harvard dissertation, 1910), pp. 641-646. 



8o MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

(Heywood's methods of work, by the way, Kirkman inti- 
mates that he knew well). There is much that is fanciful in 
Sir Kenelm Digby's " Private Memoirs " ^ as well as in his 
other works; and many of the supposedly authentic letters 
of his friend, James Howell, are fictitious.^ 

The reputation of the early news-writers was bad. They 
undertook to report events, in the words of their dean, 
Nathaniel Butter, " weekly, by God's assistance, from the 
best and most certain intelligence "; but it was notorious 
that when real news failed they invented false. Ben Jonson 
exposed their fraudulent artifices in " The Staple of News," 
and described their pamphlets as " set out every Saturday, 
but made all at home, and no syllable of truth in them." * 
Forobosco, the quack in Fletcher's " The Fair Maid of the 
Inn," furnishes one who intends to write corantos with an 
appropriate guardian spirit in the form of " the ghost of some 
lying stationer." ^ Gaspardo, in Shirley's " Love Tricks," 
says they " will write you a battle in any part of Europe at 
an hour's warning, and yet never set foot out of a tavern; 
describe you towns, fortifications, leaders, the strength of the 
enemies, what confederates, every day's march, . . . nothing 
destroys them but want of a good memory." ^ But these 
journahsts of the earlier part of the century seem respectable 
chroniclers when compared with their immediate successors. 

During the Civil War and the Commonwealth it became 
almost a matter of Hfe or death to succeed or fail in control- 
ling public opinion; and the journalists who strove to mould 
it fashioned the news in a wholly partisan manner. Whether 

^ Cf. A. H. Upham, The French Influence in English Literature (1908), pp. 369- 
370; Diet. Nat. Biog., v (1908), p. 570; and C. E. Morgan, The Novel of Manners 
(1911), pp. 60-61. 

2 A. W. Ward in The Cambridge History of English Literature, vii (191 1), p. 198. 

' Preface to Act III. 

* Act IV. ' Act I, Scene i. 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 8i 

Puritans or Royalists, they were less concerned to report 
occurrences accurately than to make the trend of events 
appear favorable to their cause. " They betook themselves 
to fabulous invention," says " A Press Full of Pamphlets " 
(1642).^ To-day the imagination of reporters, even of the 
*' yellow " tribe, is somewhat restrained by our rapid and 
easy means of communicating information, and of exposing 
canards; but those means did not then exist, and bold lying, 
being harder to overtake, progressed apace. Of the Com- 
monwealth " diurnal-maker," John Cleveland remarks: 
" To call him an historian is to knight a mandrake; . . . 
when those weekly fragments shall pass for history, let the 
poor man's box be intituled the exchequer." ^ 

Among the ten thousand " diurnals " and " relations " 
between 1640 and 1660, many were forgeries. Even the 
comparatively reliable Samuel Pecke was imprisoned for 
issuing false news. John Berkenhead so misreported the 
victories of the royalist commander Sir Ralph Hopton that 
they seemed disasters. The very productive and prosper- 
ous Henry Walker concocted, among many other fabrications 
a wholly imaginary account of the flight of Charles II; ^ and 
falsified the death-bed sayings of Oliver Cromwell, pro- 
fessedly recorded by " one who was groom of his chamber." 
Walker was indignantly called by the saintly George Fox 
" a liar, and forger of hes," — terms which accurately 
describe the other prominent journaHsts of the period, John 
Harris, George Wharton, and Marchamont Nedham.^ They 

1 J. B. Williams, A History of English Journalism to the Foundation of the 
Gazette (1908), p. 25. 

2 John Cleveland, The Character of a Diurnal Maker (1653), in Works (1687), 

P- 73- 

' Cf. A. M. Broadley, The Royal Miracle (191 2), p. 227. 

* J. B. Williams, History of English Journahsm (1908), and The Beginnings of 
English Journalism, in The Cambridge History of English Literature, vii (191 1), 
PP- 343-365- 



82 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

were indeed fit predecessors of Titus Gates, who may well be 
regarded as their monstrous scion, and who in 1678 un- 
abashed perpetrated the most outrageous hoax that has ever 
mislead the British public.^ 

After the Restoration, though journahsm in some respects 
improved, fabrication was still common. It appears, for 
example, in the '' Speeches and Prayers of the Regicides " ^ 
as well as in the Mary Carleton papers. To Wycherley's 
Manly, "out-lying a gazette writer" seemed an extraordi- 
nary achievement.^ Nor did the other kinds of imposture 
cease. Narratives which everybody nowadays regards, 
perhaps too confidently, as whoUy fictitious, were issued as 
true stories.^ Such is the case with Head and Kirkman's 
"English Rogue" (1665-1680), Croke's "Fortune's Uncer- 
tainty" (1667), Villers' "Gentleman Apothecary" (1670), 
Kirkman's " Unlucky Citizen " (1673), the anonymous 
"Rival Mother" (1692), "The Complete Mendicant" 
(1699), and many others. It has lately become known that 
the supposedly autobiographic portions of Mrs. Behn's 
" Groonoko " (1688) are mendacious.^ Such deceptions 
seem indeed the natural outcome and accompaniments of 
those journalistic practices at which we have glanced. The 
Commonwealth news-writers, for instance Wharton,^ fre- 
quently composed short lives of their friends and enemies, 
the truth of which was doubtless often greatly affected by the 

1 Cf. Thomas Seccombe, " Titus Gates, Perjurer ", in " Lives of Twelve Bad 
Men " (2d ed., 1894), pp. 95-154. 

2 Williams, History of Journalism, p. 186 n. 

3 The Plain Dealer, Act I, Scene 2. 

^ On the effect of this practice see A. J. Tieje, A Peculiar Phase of the History of 
ReaUsm in Pre-Richardsonian Fiction, in Publications of the Modem Language 
Association of America, xxviii (1913), pp. 213-252. 

* Ernest Bernbaum, " Mrs. Behn's Oroonoko," in the George LjTnan Kittredge 
Anniversary Papers (1913), pp. 419-433. 

* Williams, p. 86. — Cf. Cambridge History of English Literature, vii (191 1), 
p. 501. 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 83 

strength of their partisanship. Mrs. Hutchinson intimates 
that for a pecuniary consideration they would " write up " 
anybody's reputation.^ At least a few of their biographical 
accounts, since they are contradicted by others, must have 
been untrue. When so many men had long and systemati- 
cally been engaged in fabrication for political and sectarian 
purposes, it is readily intelligible that they would in time 
employ their artifices for other purposes as well. 

Biographies certainly came to have a poor reputation for 
veracity. " Memoir," says Richard Steele satirically, " is 
French for a novel." ^ When Dr. Johnson planned to write 
the biography of Richard Savage, he expressed a similar 
suspicion. " It may be reasonably imagined," he said, 
" that others may have the same design; but as it is not 
credible that they can obtain the same materials, it must 
be expected they will supply from invention the want of 
intelligence; and that under the title of ' The Life of Sav- 
age ' they will publish only a novel, filled with romantic 
adventure and imaginary amours." ^ 

As imposture was so notoriously operative in journalistic 
and literary activities, one is led to beHeve, at least tenta- 
tively, that other biographies besides that of Mary Carleton 
were really novels. Many biographical writings will, how- 
ever, have to be tested before this belief is wholly established. 
Facts which bear it out have, to be sure, appeared within the 
last year or two. Professor A, H. Upham has observed that 
so highly respectable a biographer as Lucy Hutchinson in 
writing the memoirs (c. 1664-167 1) of her husband, borrowed 
a good deal from the Duchess of Newcastle.* Professor C. N. 

^ Williams, p. 36. 
^ Tatler, no. 84. 

^ Boswell's Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill, i (1891), p. 190. 

* A. H. Upham, " Lucy Hutchinson and the Duchess of Newcastle," in Anglia, 
xxxvi (191 2), pp. 200-220. 



84 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

Greenough has disclosed that John Dunton stole many of his 
descriptions of New England scenes and people (composed 
after 1703).^ " The Life and Memoirs of Mrs. Behn " (1696) 
probably written by Charles Gildon, is, as I have shown else- 
where, really a novel with a woman of letters for its heroine; 
and stands in the boldness and extent of its imposture second 
only to " The Counterfeit Lady " itself.^ Signs of a parallel 
development in France are displayed in the memoirs of 
Cardinal Retz and in the voluminous biographies by Sandras. 

Much research remains, however, to be done. It will be 
hampered by that difficulty of applying reliable tests, which 
I mentioned in discussing the Carleton biographies, and 
doubtless it will in many a case be fruitless. But some 
biographies, — especially, I believe, those of criminals, 
adventurers, travelers, and sectarians, — will probably yield 
valuable results. At any rate they may henceforth be 
studied, in view of what is now known about " The Counter- 
feit Lady," with a better insight into their probable charac- 
ter, and with the expectation that a considerable number of 
them will, as Professor Greenough says of Dunton's " Life," 
prove to be misplaced in our libraries and to require trans- 
ferring from the shelves of history to those of fiction. 

If it is no longer safe, or even reasonable, to assume that 
seventeenth century journalism and biography on the one 
hand, and the works of " the father of the English novel " on 
the other, differ as fact differs from fiction, it follows that the 
doctrine of Professor Raleigh with reference to Defoe, — 
" realistic fiction in this country was first written by way of 
the direct imitation of truthful record," ' — is equally doubt- 

1 C. N. Greenough, " John Dunton's Letters from New England," in Publications 
of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, xiv (191 2), pp. 213-257. 

^ Ernest Bernbaum, " The Biography of Mrs. Behn a Fiction ", in Publications 
of the Modern Language Association of America, xxviii (1913), pp. 432-453. 

* Walter Raleigh, " The English Novel " (sth ed., 1906), p. 114. 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 85 

ful. It would be safer to hold that Defoe wrote in imitation 
of records that falsely pretended to be truthful. The notion 
that he would read a " biography " like " The Counterfeit 
Lady " and accept it as credulously as would the general 
public, ill accords with his intimate knowledge of all the tricks 
of his trade and his perfect mastery of their practice. His 
nineteenth century biographers, William Lee and Thomas 
Wright, regarded and described him as an ingenuous char- 
acter; but such contemporaries of his as Gildon, — thieves 
catching a thief, — knew that, like Walker and Kirkman 
before him, he was thoroughly schooled in unscrupulous 
mendacity.^ " Robinson Crusoe " had not yet been pub- 
lished when a contributor to "Read's Journal" described, 
in oft-quoted words, Defoe's " little art he is truly master 
of, of forging a story, and imposing it on the world for 
truth, . . . with all the little embellishment of lies that 
are contrived to set it off."^ Master of the art, they de- 
clared him ; but not its inventor, — that error is of modem 
making. 

It is probable that as we come to know more familiarly the 
journalists and biographers of the Commonwealth and 
Restoration, we shall recognize that it was their devious 
methods which guided the practices of Defoe. Their politi- 
cal subterfuges and tergiversations correspond to his. After 
their fashion are his reports of notable criminals, e. g., of 
Cartouche, John Sheppard, and Jonathan Wild. Like him 
who forged a letter from Mary Carleton in Jamaica, Defoe 
concocted a letter purporting to come from a female pick- 

^ Charles Gildon, " The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Mr. D — 
DeF — ." Its motto, Qui vult decipi, decipiatur, is noteworthy. — As early as 1691, 
Defoe is found associated with Dunton and Gildon, through his verses (The Char- 
acter of the late Dr. Samuel Annesly) contributed to the second volume of The 
Athenian Oracle. See William Lee, " Daniel Defoe " (1869), pp. 33-34. 

^ Read's Journal, i November, 1718. — Lee, "Defoe," pp. 282-283. 



86 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

pocket returned from transportation.^ And, just like his 
predecessors, he vouches for the truth of all his accounts. 
In his circumstantial narrative of the storm of 1703, during 
which some believe he was sheltered within prison walls,^ he 
expresses detestation of those who " forge a story." In his 
" Dumb Philosopher " he deplores that " the public has too 
often been imposed upon by fictitious stories." " This 
supplying a story by invention," he makes Robinson Crusoe 
remark, " is certainly a most scandalous crime; it is a sort of 
lying that makes a great hole in the heart, in which by de- 
grees a habit of lying enters in." Conformably to these 
hypocritical reflections, he wished all men to regard his 
novels (and so, indeed, one of his biographers regarded them) 
as " the narratives of some of the extraordinary characters 
who had crossed his path." ^ His protestations are no longer 
credited, and so high an authority as Professor W. P. Trent 
regretfully says: " My belief in his integrity is shattered." ^ 
What needs to be added, however, is that Defoe did not 
invent the methods of fabrication, but applied with surpass- 
ing skill methods that had been practiced, probably more 
extensively than yet realized, by a large group of minor 
writers. 

Fuller knowledge of the relation of Defoe to his predeces- 
sors would give us a clearer understanding of his novels. On 
this subject there exists at present much confusion. In the 
reaction against Wright's tendency to accept Defoe's assur- 
ances of authenticity at their face value, it is assumed that at 
least some of the novels — for example, " Moll Flanders " 

^ Applebee's Journal, i6 July, 1720. — Lee, " Defoe," ii, pp. 256-258. 

'^ Cf., however, W. P. Trent in The Cambridge History of Enghsh Literature, ix 
(1913), p. II. 

^ Thomas Wright, The Life of Daniel Defoe (1894), p. 275. 

* W. P. Trent, Bibliographical Notes on Defoe, in The Nation, Ixxxiv (1907), 
P- 515- 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 87 

and " Roxana," — were wholly derived from their author's 
imagination. But the fact that others of them are, like 
Kirkman's " Counterfeit Lady," based upon pubhshed 
sources, suggests the necessity of investigating the Defoe 
mystery anew. If, as I believe likely, journalistic and bio- 
graphic sources shall be eventually found for all of Defoe's 
great novels, the fact that he is so voluminous will seem less 
astounding. However that may be, the history of earlier 
fabrication ought to aid us in determining which of Defoe's 
narratives are substantially true, which (if any) are wholly 
imaginary, and which mingle fiction with fact. 

The considerations which I have advanced in denial of the- 
two doctrines that the criminal biographies were as a class 
substantially true, and that the narrative methods of Defoe 
were acquired by " imitating truthful records," are, like the 
doctrines themselves, surmises rather than proofs. The 
other current doctrine, however, — that in seventeenth 
century fictitious Uterature there were no very close ap- 
proaches to the novels of Defoe, — I venture to hold demon- 
strably confuted by the facts revealed concerning " The 
Counterfeit Lady." 

In reviewing the researches of the students of the English 
novel, we saw that the fictitious narratives of this period 
which seemed to them the nearest approaches to those of 
" the father of the English novel " were the following: 



665-1680 Head and Kirkman 


" The Enghsh Rogue " 


(picaresque) 


1668 Neville 


" The Isle of Pines " 


(imaginary voyage) 


1673 Kirkman 


" The Unlucky Citizen " 


(picaresque) 


678-1684 Bunyan 


" The Pilgrim's Progress " 


(rehgious allegory) 


1680 Bunyan 


" Mr. Badman " 


(story in dialogue) 


1688 Mrs. Behn 


" Oroonoko " 


(short romance) 


Mrs. Behn 


" The Fair Jilt " 


(short romance) 


1692 Congreve 


" Incognita " 


(short romance) 


1693 


" The Player's Tragedy " 


(short romance) 



1699 " The Complete Mendicant " (reahstic story) 



88 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

By inserting in this chronological list " The Counterfeit 
Lady " (1673) its very important place at once becomes 
apparent. It is important, for one reason, because it appears 
so early, — seven years before " The Pilgrim's Progress," 
fifteen before Mrs. Behn's stories, and twenty-six before 
" The Complete Mendicant." Many of the advances in the 
progress towards realistic fiction which those works are said 
to have initiated, were previously made by " The Counter- 
feit Lady." 

Even though it had appeared a decade or two later than 
1673, its claims to significance in the history of the novel 
would remain superior to those of any of the works in the 
above list, with the debatable exception of " The Complete 
Mendicant." The picaresque novels lack, as is generally 
conceded, unity and coherence; and they are too vulgarly 
satiric in tone. " The Isle of Pines," which is only about 
one-fourth as long as " The Counterfeit Lady," is too short 
to be considered a novel, and is pre-occupied with a gro- 
tesque theory of an ideal commonwealth. The works of 
Bunyan, surpassing of course all the others as literary works 
of genius, widely depart from the typical novel both in their 
purpose and especially in their form. '' The Player's 
Tragedy," and the stories of Mrs. Behn and Congreve, are 
short romances. Mrs. Behn's " Oroonoko " is, indeed, an 
instructive illustration of the manner in which the romantic 
narratives of the time were being slowly contaminated by 
realism without being essentially changed; for its few 
touches of true description are submerged beneath floods of 
traditional romance. Undoubtedly each of these works 
contributed something to the coming novel; but of none of 
them can we say, what is precisely true of " The Counterfeit 
Lady," that it closely resembles the novels of Defoe in both 
subject matter and in methods of composition. 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 89 

What " The Counterfeit Lady " exhibits is, of course, an 
early phase of the reahstic novel, and not the full develop- 
ment. It is considerably shorter than the average length of 
the novels of Defoe. Perhaps it contains a proportionally 
larger amount of true incident than they do, though this 
cannot be confidently asserted until they have been more 
thoroughly studied. Undoubtedly it is inferior to those 
admirably written works in style. Even making due allow- 
ance for the remarkable and general improvement in prose 
style that took place after 1673, we must judge the author 
of " The Counterfeit Lady " a writer whose diction is crude 
and whose interminable sentences are often incorrect. Such 
short-comings will, however, not surprise anyone who under- 
stands how slowly, as a rule, a hterary type develops. What 
to him will seem really astonishing is that Kirkman managed 
to anticipate in so many particulars the ways of his great 
successor. 

Inferior in literary skill and quahty to such masterpieces 
as " Moll Flanders," " The Counterfeit Lady " distinctly 
approaches them in matters that were indispensable to the 
progress of the novel. The similarity in the substance is 
comparatively unimportant, though one might draw a curi- 
ous parallelism between the careers of Moll Carleton and 
Moll Flanders with their frequent marriages, their thefts, 
and their transportation. The historically significant ap- 
proach is seen in less accidental matters. Kirkman might 
truly have stated one of the differences between his work 
and the earlier Carleton narratives in the words that Defoe 
used to contrast his own " Jonathan Wild " with previous 
accounts of that hero, — " the following tract does not 
indeed make a jest of his story as they do, or present his 
history, which indeed is a tragedy of itseh, in a style of 



90 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

mockery and ridicule, but in a method agreeable to the fact."^ 
The serious moral tone, the minute depiction of occurrences, 
the coherence of the plot, the tracing of the motives of the 
characters, and the elaborate creation of verisimilitude, — 
these qualities, whose combination is usually considered 
original with Defoe,^ we have seen to be prevailing traits of 
" The Counterfeit Lady." Not in merely a single respect, 
nor in an occasional passage, but in many essential partic- 
ulars, and in his narrative as a whole, Kirkman maintains 
the manner commonly associated with Defoe. " To connect 
Defoe with the past of English literature," says M. Jusse- 
rand, " we must get over the whole of the seventeenth 
century, and go back to ' Jack Wilton '." ^ This we find no 
longer necessary, for we recognize in " The Counterfeit 
Lady " an early link in the chain of realistic novels. 

^ Defoe, " Jonathan Wild " (1729), preface. 

^ Sentence after sentence from the current descriptions of Defoe's art and pur- 
pose, might be quoted and applied to The Counterfeit Lady. Compare with 
Kirkman's technique, as analyzed supra, chapter vi, the statements about Defoe's 
methods in: Gosse, Eighteenth Century Literature (1889), p. 180; Dennis, Age of 
Pope (1901), pp. 188 and 191; Harold Williams, Two Centuries of the English 
Novel (1911), pp. 18-19 and 21; G. A. Aitken, ed. Robinson Crusoe (1895), pp. 
xxxviii-xlvi; W. L. Cross, English Novel (1904), pp. 28 and 30; C. E. Morgan, The 
Novel of Manners (1911), pp. 47, 119, 127, 129, 134; and especially F. W. Chandler, 
The Literature of Roguery (1907), pp. 289, 291, 293, 295. 

' J. J. Jusserand, The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare (1895), p. 348. 



APPENDIX 



APPENDIX A 

The Current Doctrine of the Rise of the 
English Novel 

In the first chapter, I stated that modern scholars, with a 
remarkable tendency to unanimity, consider Defoe to remain 
the founder of the English novel, even after the claims of his 
alleged predecessors have been fully scrutinized. The 
researches and discussions which have led to this conclusion 
are so numerous that it is difficult to synthesize them; but 
I shall endeavor to do this, and thereby to give the ruling 
answer to the important questions : did seventeenth century 
writers approach the art of reahstic fiction, and, if so, in what 
manner and to what degree ? 

According to the general reply, the Ehzabethans who, like 
Deloney, Nash, and Breton, had occasionally ventured to 
write realistic stories, did not found a school, and were su- 
perseded by the writers of romance. The latter type in aU its 
varieties ^ long dominated, if it did not monopolize, the field 
of fiction. For at least half a century, until about 1680, the 
narrative art was progressing in a direction opposite to the 
work of Defoe. Only by keeping this in mind as the out- 
standing fact, can one, without gaining a false view of the 
whole situation, examine those other types of fiction, in their 
time less admired and produced, which by departing from 
romance were drawing nearer to reahsm. 

^ On proposed classifications of seventeenth century fiction, see C. E. Morgan, 
The Novel of Manners (191 1), p. 3 2.; A. J. Tieje, The Expressed Aim of the Long 
Prose Fiction from 1579 to 1740, in Journal of English and Germanic Philology, XI 
(1912), pp. 402-432; and Tieje's criticism of Miss Morgan's classification, in the 
same Journal, XI (191 2), p. 633. 

93 



94 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

Among these was the historical novel, exemplified by 
" English Adventures " (1678) and " The EngHsh Princess " 
(1678), in which the writers did not loftily idealize the 
characters and manners of a former age but in some degree 
conformed them to those of the Restoration period itself.^ 
More important and more numerous were those stories of 
which Mrs. Behn and Congreve are to-day the only unfor- 
gotten authors. They arose from the Italian novelle] and, 
after being modified in Spain and France, flourished in 
England, especially during the i68o's, in several varieties. 
Though it was peculiarly to them that Dryden and his 
contemporaries applied the term " novel," they seem to us 
rather short stories, few of them exceeding in length one 
hundred small pages. Their popularity was short-hved, for 
they appealed chiefly to the society of the Restoration court. 
In contrast with the remoteness and languor of the romances, 
these tales, which generaUy professed to deal with actual 
happenings, and which sometimes had a lively air, showed a 
departure toward realism.^ Hence Mrs. Behn has been 
called '' the first important English writer to apply anything 
like realistic methods to material that is not picaresque," 
and has been credited with " a share in the attempt, faint 
and ineffective, that the later seventeenth century witnessed, 
to bring romance into closer relation with contemporary 
Ufe." ^ But he who reads such opinions without reading 
Mrs. Behn's '' Oroonoko " or " The Fair Jilt," may easily 
infer too much. Relatively to the romances these tales 
seem realistic; but absolutely, they are far from being so. 
For all its alleged basis in the author's own experience, 
" Oroonoko " has the exalted temper and style of the heroic 
play; and in " The Fair Jilt," as Professor Raleigh says, " the 

' C. E. Morgan, The Novel of Manners, pp. 55-59. 

* Morgan, pp. 75-85. ^ Raleigh, The English Novel, p. 109. 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 95 

character may have been real, . . . but the language 
resembles that of the most high-souled of the heroic ladies." ^ 
Similarly, though Congreve (again by way of differentiation 
from the romance) points out similarities between his " In- 
cognita " (1692) and comedy, the real resemblance of the 
tale is rather to a romantic comedy, like Dryden's " The 
Rival Ladies," than to those masterpieces of realism, the 
comedies of manners that have made Congreve illustrious. 
Nor does the unusually vigorous human passion which an 
anonymous author infused into " The Player's Tragedy " 
(1693) project its gloomy intrigue into the clear Hght of 
actuality.^ 

Even as Miss Morgan finds that " a romantic glamour 
attached itself to the historical novels," so Professor Canby 
sees in the tale of gallantry " only the old novella, pompous 
from contamination by the historical romance." Pre- 
occupied with amorous episodes among the leisure class, " it 
lacked at all times the good stuff of character, Hfe, or emo- 
tions which could properly extend it toward the real novel." 
And though it endeavored to become realistic, it "at most 
approximated locality, actions, costumes, occasionally the 
language of the times." ^ To confirm these modern judg- 
ments, I may cite the significant title of a collection of these 
tales, published in 1686: " DeHghtful Novels, Exemplified 
in Eight Choice and Elegant Histories, Lately Related by 
the most Refined Wits, ... in which are comprised the 
Gallant Adventures, Amorous Intrigues, and Famous Enter- 
prises of several English Gentry: with the most Pathetic 
Oratory and Subtile Stratagems used in Love Affairs." 

^ Raleigh, p. 108. 
2 Morgan, p. 54. 

* Morgan, p. 55. — H. S. Canby, The Short Story in English (1909), pp. 348, 171, 
160-161. 



96 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

Such were the traits which the age itself valued in these 
productions. 

Among the kinds of narrative which, unlike the historical 
novel and the tale of gallantry, satisfied the perennial craving 
for realism, were the burlesque romance, the narrative satire, 
and the picaresque novel. These, says Miss Morgan, were 
effective in " the training of readers and writers of all classes 
to appreciate the humorous or comic view of life, the culti- 
vating of a taste for robust animalism as opposed to the 
ethereal sentimentalism of the romances, the revealing of the 
possibilities of low life and bourgeois material, the realistic 
depiction of a definite, concrete background, and the develop- 
ing of a vigorous, colloquial style for purposes of narration, 
although not as yet for the expression of emotion." ^ But 
surely these general consequences cannot be solely or even 
chiefly ascribed to the narratives in question; for the same 
results were being produced by far more distinguished types 
of literature, — for example, verse satire and the comedy of 
manners. If we ask whether influences of a less indeter- 
minable character proceeded specifically from the burlesque, 
the narrative satire, and the picaresque novel, we obtain, in 
the cases of the first two, a prompt negative. No one sug- 
gests that Defoe borrowed the substance, or imitated the 
form, of travesties like " The Essex Champion " (1683), or 
of so-called narrative satires (largely descriptive) like " The 
Adventures of Covent Garden " (1699) ^^^ the scandalous 
sketches of Ned Ward and Tom Brown. Whatever was 
peculiar to these forms was uninfluential. 

Of the picaresque novel, the status seems at first sight 
somewhat different. Professor Chandler, the authority on 
the literature of roguery, defines that branch of it called the 
picaresque novel in these precise terms: " the comic biog- 

^ Morgan, pp. 48-49. 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 97 

raphy (or more often the autobiography) of an anti-hero 
who makes his way in the world through the service of 
masters, satirizing their personal faults, as well as their 
trades and professions." ^ Since the novels of Defoe fre- 
quently recount the lives of rogues, it is natural to assume, 
before reading a seventeenth century picaresque novel, that 
in such work lies the source of his art. But this assumption 
proves mistaken. In the first place, Defoe might learn (and, 
as we have seen, as a matter of fact did learn) that choice of 
subject from yet another type of narrative. Secondly, by 
the time he began to write fiction, the picaresque novel had 
been for nearly half a century a moribund form.^ In the 
days of Elizabeth and James I, it had had a promising start 
in several interesting works, among them Nash's admirable 
"The Unfortunate Traveller"; but thereafter, except for 
two insignificant tales, by Dekker and by Thomas Cranley, 
it lived for over sixty years only in translations. The 
native revival of this exotic type, in " The English Rogue " 
(1665-1671) and " The Unlucky Citizen " (1673), was both 
brief and contemptible. Critics unite in despising these 
chaotic " scrap-heaps of literary reminiscences," pilfered 
from jest-books and cony-catching pamphlets, compared 
to which the plots of Defoe are firmly knit.^ Even more 
insignificant were " The Dutch Rogue " (1683), " a wretched 
copy of the Spanish and possibly a translation "; and " The 
Irish Rogue " (1690), " a cheap tract." * Not only were 
picaresque novels in this period rarely and badly written, but 

1 F. W. Chandler, The Literature of Roguery (1907), I, p. 5. 

2 Chandler, p. 229. — Confirmed by Morgan, pp. 46-47. 

3 R. P. Utter, The Origins of the English Novel (unpublished Harvard disser- 
tation), pp. 119, 121. — W. L. Cross, English Novel, p. 26. — George Saintsbury, 
A Short History of English Literature (1900), p. 517; and his The English Novel 
(1913), PP- 48-50. 

* Morgan, p. 46. 



98 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

for an even more important reason they did not lead up to 
the work of Defoe: in their general tone they were vulgarly 
comic, if not cynical. A narrative of exceptional character, 
" The Complete Mendicant," published as late as 1699, and 
sometimes termed a picaresque novel, is not truly of the type 
for the very reason that it is serious. More than any other 
work so far mentioned, it anticipates the narratives of Defoe; 
it has, in fact, been attributed to him. The picaresque 
novel in the accurate sense of the term, however, fell short, 
according to authorities on this subject, of exercising upon 
Defoe a notable impulse.^ 

*' What fiction needed," Professor Cross remarks, " was 
first of all to rid itself of the extravagances of the romancer 
and the cynicism of the picaresque story-teller." ^ In his 
opinion, as in that of many others, the author who freed 
narration from these encumbrances was John Bunyan. " In 
his use of accurate detail to produce the illusion of actual- 
ity," says Miss Morgan, " in the naturalism of his characters 
and in the adoption of a vigorous, colloquial, yet dignified 
style, he was a worthy predecessor of Defoe." ^ The form of 
Bunyan's works being, however, obviously different from 
that of Defoe's, she herself adds that they " scarcely belong 
to the history of prose fiction." ^ Others unhesitatingly 
assign them an integral place in its development. Professor 
Saintsbury, who minimizes the importance of " The English 
Rogue," says of Bunyan's greatest work: " If, discarding 
arbitrary axioms, we confine ourselves to the real qualities 
of the novel, we shall find it very hard to discover one 
which is not eminently present in " The Pilgrim's Prog- 
ress " (1678-1684). And of "The Life and Death of 

^ Chandler, pp. 285-300. — Confirmed by Miss Morgan, p. 47. 

^ Cross, English Novel, p. 21. 

' Morgan, p. 123. * Ibid., p. 138. Cf. pp. 126-127. 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 99 

Mr. B adman " (1680) he declares: " It is scarcely an exag- 
geration to say that this once printed, the English Novel in 
its most characteristic form, as opposed to the Romance, was 
founded." ^ Likewise concerning it Mr. Gosse had pre- 
viously remarked: " It is absolutely original as an attempt 
at realistic fiction, and it leads through Defoe on to Fielding 
and the great school of English novels." " 

These sweeping assertions seem on reflection the impulsive 
result of justifiably enthusiastic admiration of Bunyan's 
graphic style and imaginative genius. From the historical 
point of view, Bunyan's especial contribution is, after all, 
not to the novel as a type but to the general spirit of litera- 
ture. In all literary forms, his age regularly treated the life 
of the lower and middle classes with satiric levity. Bunyan, 
on the other hand, dignified common humanity by treating 
it with profound seriousness. One may see his influence on 
Defoe in this respect, as well as that of his style and his 
imagination, without becoming blind to the fact that Bunyan 
did not directly approach the fiction of the future either in 
purpose or in form. Surely the purpose of the eighteenth 
century novel was not religious edification; nor was its form 
either dialogue or allegory. 

That the seventeenth century approaches to the realistic 
novel hitherto considered were neither direct nor close, will, 
I think, be the conclusion of anyone who scrutinizes them 
without indulging the propensity of the student of origins 
to see the coming flower in every leaf. Other forms of nar- 
rative, — e. g., the vulgar redactions of the romances, the 
didactic story, and the Oriental tale, — have been examined 
without overturning the established doctrine.^ The claims 

1 Saintsbury, History of English Literature, pp. 515, 516; and his The Novel, 

PP- 53-58. 

^ Gosse, Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 85. 
^ Morgan, pp. 115-116, 118, 111-114, iio-iii. 



loo MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

of one and all to be regarded as progressing toward Defoe 
appear as weak as those of the ancient worthy of Blarney 
who, on being asked whether he had ever been to Dublin, 
replied: " Not all the way, — but I've been as far as Cork." 
A singular little work, Henry Neville's " Isle of Pines " 
(1668), anticipates, according to Mr. Garnett and Mr. 
Saintsbury, the style of Defoe with its " ingeniously multi- 
pHed and adjusted detail," and is in a way a Robinsoniad.^ 
But as this imaginary voyage, with its polygamous hero and 
" ideal " commonwealth, is only thirty-one pages long, it can 
hardly be regarded as an important step toward the novel. 
The least distant approaches which have been discovered, — 
like " The Complete Mendicant " (1699) already mentioned; 
" Love in a Passion, Without Discretion " (1709) and " The 
Reformed Whore " (c. 1709), two short love stories; " The 
Lover's Secretary" (1713) by Tom Brown; and "The 
Double Captive " (1718),^ — are, it is noteworthy, works 
contemporary with Defoe's activity. In short, the re- 
searches whose conclusions we have reviewed, end in estab- 
lishing Defoe's reputation for originality upon a wider 
foundation. 

1 Richard Garnett, The Age of Dryden (1895), p. 246. — Saintsbury, The Novel, 
pp. 58-61. — The credibility of The Isle of Pines was attacked in Das Verdaechtige 
Pineser Eyland, Hamburg (1668). 

^ Morgan, pp. 1 19-120, 108. 



APPENDIX B 

Bibliographical Dlfficulties 

Many of the Carleton narratives give rise to bibliographical 
and chronological problems. Eight of them, bracketed in 
the list given in Chapter I, are lost; the respective order 
of appearance of some is unascertainable; and the inter- 
relationship of others is not self-evident. But for the pur- 
pose of this inquiry, some of these difficulties need not, 
fortunately, be attacked. It is probably impossible, and is 
here unnecessary, to determine which of the three earliest 
narratives was the very first to appear, and whether the 
" Memoires " preceded the " Life and Character " of 1673. 
No surmises of these points have entered into the argu- 
ment presented in this study. 

Of some of the difficulties that must be surmounted, rea- 
sonably satisfactory solutions may be found. The character 
of four of the lost works is discoverable because they were 
either wholly or partly absorbed in extant works, — "A 
Westminster Wedding " in " The Counterfeit Lady," the 
'' Replication " of John Carleton in his " Ultimum Vale," 
and both the " Letter from Jamaica " and the " Deportment 
and Carriage " in the " Memoires." Again, though the 
second edition of " The Counterfeit Lady " professes to be 
*' corrected," it need not be regarded as essentially different 
from the first. Not only was revision of that kind an unusual 
and in this case unnecessary labor, but in places where correc- 
tions might certainly be expected they are not found; for 
example, the 1679 edition retains the sentence: " It is now 
just nine years from her thus first acting on the stage to her 



I02 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

last acting on the gallows," ^ — obviously a mere reprint of 
the 1673 edition. The really serious perplexities arise con- 
cerning " The Case of Madam Mary Carleton " (1663), the 
1673 edition of " The Life and Character," — both being 
lost, — and the relationship of those two works to " The 
Counterfeit Lady." 

That a work entitled " The Case of Madam Mary Carle- 
ton," with a portrait of Mary and a dedication to Prince 
Rupert, was actually published in 1663, is certain; for it is 
thus described in that year by John Carleton in his reply 
thereto, " Ultimum Vale." ^ His description, furthermore, 
enables us to identify the first part of " The Life and Char- 
acter " (1732) as a re-issue, without the portrait and dedica- 
tion, of the " Case." All that Carleton says of the " Case " 
is comprised in the statements that it is written for Mary by 
a " mercenary pedant," " is better worded than believed," 
contains " new invented lies," intimates that he did not write 
the " Replication," declares " she will own him till death 
dissolve the union," and suggests that she will shortly return 
home. Every one of these allusions, — with the possible 
exception of the last, which is ambiguous, and which may 
easily have been his interpretation of several remarks that 
she makes concerning his house on the one hand, and her 
alleged home country on the other, — clearly apphes to the 
"Life and Character"; for the latter is remarkably tren- 
chant yet pedantic in style, makes many new allegations, 
hints a doubt regarding the authorship of the " Rephcation," 
and does protest that *' she will own him till death dissolve 
the union." ^ Again, the second part of the " Life and 
Character " opens with the words: " Thus you have read 

1 Counterfeit Lady, p. lOo. 
^ Pp. 41-42. 

^ Cf. Life and Character, especially pp. 35 and 68-69, ^nd Ultimum Vale, pp. 
42-46. 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 103 

her Case." ^ Add to these evidences the fact that long 
passages in " The Counterfeit Lady " closely resemble 
passages in " The Life and Character," yet are declared by 
the author to have been derived from the " Case "; ^ and the 
identification of the first part of " The Life and Character " 
with " The Case of Madam Mary Carleton " appears 
established. 

The second part of " The Life and Character," called the 
" Appendix," shows likewise an intimate relationship to 
"The Counterfeit Lady": for both recount episodes of 
Mary's career from 1664 to 1673 in much the same way and 
in just the same order, which is true of none of the other 
biographies; and verbal correspondence between them 
frequently recurs. On first comparing them one is uncertain 
whether the " Appendix " is a new, and perhaps slightly 
revised, edition of a source of " The Counterfeit Lady "; or, 
on the other hand, a succinct summary of the concluding 
portions of " The Counterfeit Lady." Closer examination 
eliminates the last of these possibihties. " The Counterfeit 
Lady " rarely mentions the names of persons involved in 
Mary's escapades; but the " Appendix " gives them even 
in unimportant cases, — an addition that, in a summary, is 
at least curious. The " Appendix " concludes with a con- 
fession by Mary which the closing pages of " The Counter- 
feit Lady " do not record. Most convincing in this respect 
are the many differences of detail in corresponding passages 
of the two works, of which we have seen many illustrations 
in the course of this study, and which are inexplicable on the 
theory that the " Appendix " is a summary but are easily 
explainable on the ground that it is a source. 

* Life and Character, p. 71. 

^ Cf. Counterfeit Lady, pp. 27-94, and Life and Character, pp. 17-63. 



I04 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

Whoever re-issued the " Appendix " in 1732, however, did 
not faithfully follow the first edition throughout. One 
passage, — meant to challenge the attention of the reader, 
for the word " boy " is therein printed in large capitals, — 
reads as follows : 

She returned in little more than a year, great with child, and was 
delivered of a fine BOY, at her lodgings in the Httle Old Bailey; 
though some have said she was brought to bed in Newgate, and that it 
was a miraculous child, by saving his mother's life when in the womb, 
insinuating thereby that she evaded the execution of her sentence of 
death by pleading her belly. ^ 

It is true that Mary, vainly hoping to escape the gallows, 
alleged that she was pregnant; but the rest of the quoted 
statement is false, the actual birth of a boy not even being 
rumored in the publications of Mary's own day. Since 
the author of " The Counterfeit Lady " does not overlook 
gossip of a far less trivial character than this, he very prob- 
ably would have discussed the matter had he found it 
mentioned in the first edition of the " Appendix." Fortu- 
nately enough, we can account for this mysterious boy, who 
is first mentioned in 1 732. In that year a conspicuous figure, 
with whom slander was busy, was Alderman Barber; and his 
contemporary. Lord Harley, in some interesting notes on 
biographies, chances to make the following remarks regard- 
ing the one with which we are concerned: 

At the end of the year 1732 comes out the " Life of Mary Moders, 
alias, alias," said to be the second edition. The meaning of printing 
this was upon a story that John Barber, Mayor of London that year, 
was her natural son, got upon her in Newgate, and bred up a devil to a 
printing house; but as to his birth it is not so.^ 

^ Life and Character, p. 75. 

* Notes and Queries, 2d Series, IX (i860), p. 418. 



MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 105 

This explanation of how the troublesome passage came to be 
written, removes the only stumbhng block in the way of the 
conclusion that the " Appendix," slightly modified in 1732, 
was a source of " The Counterfeit Lady." 

Thus the author of the latter had when he wrote, in 1673, 
both the " Case " and the " Appendix " before him. More- 
over these two publications were not at that time separate; 
but, as in 1732, combined : for the Hnk which united them in 
the 1732 edition is found verbatim in '' The Counterfeit 
Lady." ^ The title of the combined work was, doubtless 
already in its first edition, of 1673, " The Life and Character 
of Mrs. Mary Moders." The fact that under 1673 no such 
work is recorded in the *' Term Catalogues " proves nothing 
to the contrary, since no less than three other publications 
concerning Mary, — " Memories of Madam Charlton," 
" Some Luck, Some Wit," and " An Elegy on Madam Mary 
Carlton, " — which are extant and of that year, are likewise 
not recorded there. 

These difficulties once out of the way, we may now clearly 
see what the genesis of " The Life and Character " really was. 
Its first part, Mary's own " Case," appeared in 1663. Ten 
years later, on the occasion of her execution, someone re- 
printed that " Case, " added as the " Appendix " a succinct 
account of her fife between 1663 and 1673, ^^d entitled the 
whole " The Life and Character of Mrs. Mary Moders." 
Both parts of it were straightway used as a source by the 
author of " The Counterfeit Lady." In 1732, when rumor 
made the then mayor of London a son of the notorious woman 
of half a century earlier, someone seized the opportunity to 
issue a second edition of " The Life and Character," and 
made it saleable by adding the conspicuous amendment con- 

* Cf. Counterfeit Lady, pp. 66-67 and Life and Character, p. 71. 



io6 MARY CARLETON NARRATIVES 

cerning Mary's boy. Except for that passage, and some 
trivial changes to bring the work up to date, — like " was " 
for " is now," or " famous " for the obsolete " celebrious," — 
the edition of 1732 followed the first edition closely. For us 
its value is very great; for it substantially preserves the lost 
" Case " of 1663, and the lost " Appendix " of 1673, the two 
most important sources of " The Counterfeit Lady." 



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